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LIBRARY 

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UNIVERSITY  OF  U-UHOIS 


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THE  CLASS  OF  ’FIFTY-THREE 

IN 

YALE  COLLEGE 


A  SUPPLEMENTARY  HISTORY 

BY  THE  SECRETARY 


NEW  HAVEN: 

TUTTLE,  MOREHOUSE  &  TAYLOR,  PRINTERS 

1894 


V 

t 


c 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 


Introductory  and  Explanatory, 


r 


Summary  and  Classification  of  Deaths,  . 

Members  Living  July,  1893,  with  personal  addresses  and  notes, 
Roll  and  Obituary  Notices  of  those  who  have  died  since  July,  1883, 
Details  and  Summaries  of  the  Class  History  : 

I.  Class  Ages,  ...... 

II.  Marriage  and  Family,  . 

III.  Geographical  Distribution,  .  .  .  . 

IY.  Occupations,  ....... 

V.  The  Class  in  the  War, 

VI.  Public  and  Political  Life,  .  .  .  . 

VII.  The  Class  in  Literature,  .  .  .  . 

VIII.  Personal  and  Private,  . 


94  f  s’  80 


I  ‘ 


INTRODUCTORY  AND  EXPLANATORY. 


My  connection  with  this  Supplementary  Report  began  in 
1888,  when  it  was  suggested  at  a  dinner  at  the  Union  League 
Club  given  to  his  classmates  in  and  around  New  York,  by 
Julius  Catlin,  now  of  blessed  memory,  that  we  had  reached  a 
point  when  it  would  be  interesting  to  go  beyond  the  previous 
manual  and  attempt  some  systematic  analysis  and  review  of  the 
class  history  as  a  whole,  and  that  I  should  undertake  it. 

The  materials  for  such  a  history  down  to  1883  were  already 
collected  in  the  manual  of  that  year  which  represented  the 
enterprising  work  of  MbFarland  and  Train,  particularly 

Train. 

For  my  part  1  have  had  to  collect  the  statistics  of  the  class 
first  for  the  five  years  following  1883  and  arrange  them  for  pre¬ 
sentation  at  the  reunion  in  1888,  and  to  do  the  same  again  five 
years  later  for  the  fourth  decennial  reunion  in  1893.  These 
two  reports  are  combined  in  the  one  now  published,  in  a  v  ay 
which  will  explain  itself  and  which  is  intended  to  preserve  as 
far  as  possible  the  distinct  features  of  both  reports. 

Train’s  Report  contains  notes  of  nine  meetings  of  the  Class 
after  graduation  and  includes  the  third  decennial  in  1883, 
which  as  celebrated  with  an  oration  by  White,  a  poem  by  Lew  is 
and  a  diimer  at  the  Homestead,  Savin  Rock,  is  reported  in 

Train’s  supplement  of  that  year. 

My  first  Report  which  is  the  basis  of  the  one  now  pub¬ 
lished  was  presented  at  the  Thirty-Fifth  Anniversary,  Tuesday, 
June  26,  1888  at  Hill’s  Homestead,  Savin  Rock.  In  the  after¬ 
noon  the  class  and  their  friends  assembled  in  a  public  meeting 
at  the  Battell  Chapel  and  listened  to  an  oration  by  Whiton. 
There  were  present  at  the  dinner  Arms,  Rabcock,  Bacon,  Lis- 
sell,  Bond,  Bradstreet,  Bromley,  Catlin  L.  A.,  Cobb,  Dowd, 
jGibson,  Gilbert,  Greene,  Ilarland,  Hudson,  Knevals,  Lewis, 


6 


Robinson,  Seymour,  Smith,  Spooner,  Stearns,  Stedman,  Thomas 
C.  L.,  Train,  Twining,  Waite,  Welch,  White,  Whit  on,  Wood¬ 
ward,  31  in  all.  Bacon  presided.  Grace  was  said  by  Twining. 
There  were  no  formal  speeches.  Twining  read  his  report  and 
everyone  was  free  to  interrupt  as  he  would.  The  result  was 
indescribable,  but  lively,  and  as  one  of  the  Hew  Haven  jour¬ 
nals  remarked  the  next  morning,  the  “  old  gentlemen  seemed 
to  enjoy  themselves  very  much  until  long  after  other  people 
had  gone  to  bed.” 

The  fourth  decennial  reunion  of  the  class  was  held  at  Hew 
Haven,  Tuesday,  June  27,  1 893,  at  Stewart’s  Restaurant.  There 
were  present,  Arms,  Babcock,  Bacon,  Bingham,  Bissell,  Bennett, 
Bond,  Brewster,  Bromley,  Brooks  D.  W.,  Catlin  L.  A.,  Coit, 
Davies,  Dowd,  Gilbert,  Greene,  Harland,  Hedges,  Holmes, 
Hoyt,  Hudson,  Ives  (non-graduate),  Knevals,  Lewis,  Lord, 
McFarland,  Robinson,  Shiras,  Smith,  Spooner,  Stearns,  Sted¬ 
man,  Thomas  C.  L.,  Tobey,  Twining,  Warren,  Welch,  Weston, 
Willard,  Woodward,  40  in  all.  Robinson  presided  at  the  din¬ 
ner  and  Davies  said  grace. 

This  reunion  owed  much  of  its  success  to  a  preliminary 
meeting  in  Hew  York  when  sixteen  of  the  class  assembled  at 
the  Century  Club  House,  lunched  together  and  discussed  plans 
and  measures  for  securing  a  full  reunion  and  a  report  that 
should  bring  the  class  history  down  to  date.  There  were 
present  at  this  meeting  Stedman,  Knevals,  Weston,  Tobey, 
Bingham,  Bromley,  Harland,  Twining,  Whiton,  Bennett, 
Brewster,  Lewis,  McFarland,  Catlin  (Julius),  Babcock  and 
Welch.  Twining  presided.  Grace  was  said  by  Bingham.  In 
the  course  of  the  luncheon  a  note  was  received  from  Augustus 
Rodney  MacDonough,  Esq.,  son  of  the  Commodore  hero  of 
Plattsburg,  giving  the  greeting  of  a  Yalensian  of  the  class  of 
’39,  and  welcoming  us  to  the  hospitalities  of  the  Century  Asso¬ 
ciation,  in  which  it  may  be  remarked  incidentally,  seven  mem¬ 
bers  of  our  Class  have  had  the  honor  of  membership :  Lewis, 
White,  Stedman,  Weston,  Harland,  Heard,  Twining.  Mr. 
MacDonough’s  note  was  replied  to  by  a  composite  affair  written 
partly  by  Bingham  in  the  language  of  the  Gilbert  Islanders, 
partly  by  Lewis  in  Greek  and  for  the  rest  by  Whiton  in 
Latin. 


7 


In  the  report  which  follows  I  do  not  propose  to  repeat  the 
work  done  so  well  by  Train,  but  only  to  supplement  the  bio- 
|  graphic  rolls  with  such  additions  as  were  required,  first  to 
bring  them  down  to  1888  and  then  again  to  1893,  and  after¬ 
wards,  by  some  analysis  and  classification  of  my  own,  to  show 
how  the  class  stood  at  these  two  critical  periods  in  its  career, 
what  its  members  were  and  had  done,  where  they  were,  how 
they  had  fared  in  life  and  in  short  to  tell  the  story  of  one 
Yale  College  class  and  to  show  what  it  is  and  has  been  in  the 
personal  history  of  its  members  and  in  its  relations  to  the  com¬ 
plex  forces  of  human  society. 

In  the  interval  which  has  elapsed  since  our  reunion  last  sum¬ 
mer  we  have  sustained  two  serious  losses  in  the  death  of  Bil¬ 
lings,  Dec.  1,  1893,  and  of  Julius  Catlin,  July  20,  1893.  These 
losses  do  not  belong  in  the  four  decennials  reported  and  are 
therefore  not  reckoned  in  the  report  for  our  last  meeting.  They 
are  however  noticed  at  the  end  of  the  tabular  statements  and 
in  full  among  the  personal  notices  of  deceased  members  of  the 
class. 

The  biographic  notices  of  members  who  died  previous  to 
1883  will  be  found  in  Train’s  report  of  that  year  and  are  not 
repeated  in  this  Supplement. 


Morristown,  N.  J., 
June  1st,  1894. 


KINSLEY  TWINING. 


: 


J 


I 


SUMMARY  AND  CLASSIFICATION 


OF  DEATHS  AND  LIVING  MEMBERSHIP. 


Original  graduate  membership,  .  .  .  108 

Living  at  the  4th  Decennial  in  ’93,  .  .  .  69 

Lost  by  death  in  40  years,  ....  39 

Catlin,  Billings  and  Lord  have  died  since  the  reunion  last 
summer,  so  that  at  the  present  writing  the  living  membership 
of  the  Class  is  66  and  the  roll  of  the  dead  numbers  42. 

These  42  deaths  are  distributed  through  the  interval  since 
our  graduation  as  follows  : 


I 


Previous  to  the  1st  Triennial  in  ’56,  ...  2 

Walden,  July  24,  1854. 

Hogan,  May  29,  1855. 


During  the  next  seven  years,  previous  to  the  first 
Decennial,  ...... 

Goodrich,  Oct.  24,  1859. 

Blachly,  Apr.  6,  1860. 

Denniston,  July  22,  1862. 

Webb,  Dec.  26,  1862. 

Total  for  ten  years,  . 

Living  membership  after  ten  years, 


6 

102 


During  the  second  Decennial  from  1863  to  1873, 


Anderson, 

Brooks  (Charles), 

Grout, 

Nicholas, 

Bradley, 

Whittlesey, 

Post, 

Total  for  twenty  years. 
Living  membership  after  twenty  years, 


Mar.  25,  1864. 
Jan.  11,  1866. 
July  26,  1866. 
Jan.  29,  1870. 
July  22,  1870. 
Oct.  18,  1871. 
Jan.  8,  1873. 


7 


13 

95 


10 


During  the  third  Decennial  from  1873  to  1883, 


Capron, 

Jan. 

4,  1874. 

Baer, 

Jan. 

19,  1875. 

Hall, 

Oct. 

19,  1875. 

Townsend, 

Sept. 

1,  1877. 

Tarbox, 

Nov. 

14,  1878. 

Jack, 

Aug. 

26,  1880. 

Phelps, 

Dec. 

21,  1880. 

Goddard, 

Jan. 

11,  1882. 

Total  for  thirty  years. 

Living  membership  after  thirty  years, 

• 

During  the  fourth  Decennial  from  1883  to  1893, 

Reported  in  the  first  five  years, 

• 

Aiken, 

Mar. 

29,  1884. 

Williamson, 

May 

8,  1885. 

Reported  in  the  second  five  years,  . 

Skelding, 

Nov. 

23,  1888. 

Jones, 

Mar. 

28,  1889. 

Watrous, 

July 

5,  1889. 

Kline, 

Oct. 

15,  1889. 

Heard, 

Mar. 

25,  1890. 

French, 

June 

17,  1890. 

Penniman, 

Aug. 

2,  1890. 

Train, 

Feb. 

10,  1891. 

Burr, 

Feb. 

16,  1891. 

Palfrey, 

June 

11,  1891. 

Cobb, 

Sept. 

23,  1891. 

Gleason, 

Feb. 

21,  1892. 

Hart  (Augustine), 

Apr. 

25,  1892. 

Seymour, 

Oct. 

16,  1892. 

Gillespie, 

Oct. 

17,  1892. 

Gibson, 

Dec. 

15,  1892. 

Total  for  ten  years,  . 

• 

“  forty 

<< 

• 

Living  membership  after  forty  years,  . 

• 

Died  since  June  27,  1893, 

• 

. 

Catlin  (Julius), 

July 

20,  1893. 

Billings, 

Dec. 

1,  1893. 

Lord, 

May 

11,  1894. 

Living  membership  at  date, 


8 


21 

87 

18 


16 


18 

39 

69 

3 


66 


1 


11 


The  Roll  of  the  Class  for  these  successive  periods  reads  as 
follows : 


Graduated  in  1853,  .  .  .  .  .108 

Living  “  1863,  .....  102 

“  “  1873,  .....  95 

“  “  1883, .  87 

“  “  1893,  .....  69 

Present  living  membership,  1894,  ...  66 


The  losses  in  the  successive  decennial  periods  have  been  6, 
7,  8,  and  18.  I  hardly  need  say  that  the  4th,  particularly  the 
last  half  of  it,  has  been  our  black  decennial. 

Lewis,  whose  standing  as  an  actuary  is  well  known,  has  cal¬ 
culated  the  probability  of  life  for  the  entire  class  as  based  on 
their  ages  of  entrance  and  down  to  Commencement  day,  1894. 
According  to  the  American  mortality  tables  there  should  be 
surviving  at  that  time  63.  At  present  appearances  there  will 
be  66.  This  computation  shows  that  down  to  the  fatal  five 
years  beginning  with  1888  during  which  we  lost  16  men  a  very 
high  life  rate  had  been  maintained. 


\ 


X. 

II 

I 

MEMBERS  LIVING  JULY,  1893 

WITH  PERSONAL  ADDRESSES  AND  NOTES. 


Arms,  William  Frederick,  Rev.,  Terry ville,  Ct. 

Resigned  parish.  Has  no  charge.  Eldest  daughter  married 
Rev.  E.  H.  Burt,  West  Wingfield,  H.  Y.;  Katharine  P.  married 
Andrew  S.  Gaylord,  Dean,  Terryville,  Ct.  Lucy,  youngest 
daughter,  studying  wood  carving  at  Pratt  Institute,  Brooklyn, 
H.  Y. 

Babcock,  Henry  Harper,  Merchant,  Hew  Haven,  Ct. 

Ho  changes  to  report.  Bachelor. 

Bacon,  Theodore,  Lawyer ;  Bacon,  Briggs,  Beckley  &  Bis- 
sell,  Rochester,  H.  Y. 

Ho  changes  to  report. 

Baldwin,  George  William,  Lawyer,  Union  Club,  Boston, 
Mass. 

Was  traveling  abroad  last  year ;  supposed  to  he  now  at  Santa 
Barbara,  Cal.  Bachelor. 

Bartlett,  William  Frederick  Vincent,  D.D.  (Central 
University,  Ky.)  Pastor  1st  Pres.  Church,  Lexington,  Ky., 
since  1874. 

Has  had  seven  children.  Lost  one  son  by  death.  One  son 
and  one  daughter  are  married. 

Bennett,  Henry  Silliman,  Lawyer ;  practicing  his  profes¬ 
sion,  518  Madison  ave.,  Hew  York. 

Ho  changes  to  report. 

. 

Billings,  Edward  Coke,  LL.D.  (Yale  1890),  Judge  U.  S. 
District  Court,  Hew  Orleans. 

Died  subsequent  to  the  class  reunion,  at  Hew  Haven,  Dec. 

J  1,  1893,  of  heart  failure  after  a  prolonged  period  of  infirm 
health,  resulting  from  typhoid  fever.  Widower.  Ho  chil¬ 
dren.  (See  biographic  notice  page  26). 


14 


Bingham,  Hiram,  D.D.  (Yale  1893),  Honolulu,  Sandwic 
Islands,  District  Secretary  of  the  A.  B.  C.  F.  M. 

Has  completed  during  the  year  past  at  the  Bible  Hous 
He w  York,  the  translation  of  the  Bible  into  the  language  < 
the  Gilbert  Islands.  Has  been  delicate  in  health,  but  at  la 
reports  was  holding  his  own.  Mrs.  Bingham  is  with  hir 
He  has  a  son  at  Andover  preparing  for  Yale. 


h 


}f 

st 

a. 


Bishop,  Albert  Webb,  Lawyer,  Buffalo,  N.  Y. 

In  good  health  but  has  retired  from  the  active  practice  c 
law. 


>f 


Bissell,  William,  Physician  in  active  practice,  Lakeville. 
Salisbury,  Comi. 

Nothing  to  report. 


Bliss,  Henry  Isaac,  Civil  Engineer,  Lacrosse,  Wis. 
Doing  well.  Reports  no  changes. 


Bond,  Henry  Richardson,  Banker,  Hew  London,  Conn. 

Well,  but  no  changes  to  report. 

Brad  street,  Edward  Payson,  Lawyer,  cor.  4th  and  Maiil 
sts.,  Cincinnati,  Ohio. 

Reports  no  changes. 

Brewster,  William  Cullen,  Banker,  24  E.  64th  st.,  Hew 
York. 

Reports  no  changes.  Well  and  prosperous. 

Bromley,  Isaac  Hill,  Journalist,  353  W.  57th  st.,  Nev- 
York. 

In  1884  Editor  of  the  New  York  Commercial  Adver_ 
tiser  •  then  of  the  Rochester  Post  Express ;  then  until  1889. 
assistant  to  the  President  of  the  Union  Pacific  Railway  an^ 
living  in  Boston  ;  then  for  two  years  looking  over  the  “  ticker  y 
and  “  deciding  whether  I  should  drive  one  horse  or  two. 
Providence  led  me  gently  through  various  phases  of  this  quesf, 
tion,  finally  planting  me  in  a  liorse-car.  I  resumed  editorial 
work  on  the  Tribune ,  Oct.  1891,  and  am  there  now  shooting 
folly  as  she  flies/’ 


15 


Brooks,  David  Wheelock,  Lawyer,  Detroit,  Mich. 
Busy.  Successful.  Reports  no  changes. 


Bunn,  Charles  Wesley,  Teacher,  Pennington,  New  Jersey. 

Slowly  dying  and  nearly  helpless  at  his  home  with  his  bro¬ 
il  ier  Samuel  F.  Bunn.  He  did  however  summon  his  energies 
and  in  a  failing  hand,  writing  word  by  word  with  a  pencil 
s'ends  his  classmates  this  message  : 

I 

“I  am  suffering  from  progressive  paralysis.  It  has  been  slowly  but 
surely  doing  its  work,  until  now  I  am  almost  helpless.  Writing  exhausts 
me.  It  would  afford  me  much  happiness  to  be  present  at  the  class-meet¬ 
ing.  All  I  can  say  is,  I  am  simply  waiting  for  the  end  and,  though  I 
inay  not  see  your  faces  here  again,  I  hope  to  meet  you  all  in  heaven.” 


In  a  letter  dated  April  4,  1894,  he  writes  again  speaking  of 
;he  great  loss  he  had  suffered  in  the  death  of  his  wife  July  3, 
1887,  and  the  comfort  he  has  in  his  son  now  in  his  22d  year,  in 
the  wholesale  shoe  business  with  Morse  and  Rogers,  134  and 
136  Duane  st.,  New  York.  He  adds  : 

“  I  am  just  lingering  near  the  shore  of  the  mystic  river,  which  sooner 
or  later  I  must  cross  at  the  bidding  of  the  Master.” 


Catlin,  Julius,  Merchant,  late  residence  16  E.  45th  st., 
New  York.  Business  address  216  Church  st. 

Died  suddenly  a  few  weeks  subsequent  to  the  last  reunion,  • 
of  heart  failure  at  the  Restigouche  Fishing  Club  House, 
July  20,  1893. 

(For  further  biographic  notice  see  page  27). 

Catlin,  Lynde  Alexander,  Gentleman  farmer,  Woodstock, 
Conn. 

Bachelor.  Judge  of  Probate.  Reports  no  changes. 

Clark,  Edson  Lyman,  Rev.,  Hinsdale,  Berkshire  Co., 
Mass. 

In  poor  health,  not  strong  enough  to  assume  a  pastoral 
charge.  Preaches  occasionally.  His  wife  is  living,  but  his 
children,  a  promising  son  and  daughter  have  both  died  since 
the  meeting  in  1883. 

2 


16 


Coit,  Joshua,  Rev.,  Boston,  Mass. 

Secretary  of  the  Massachusetts  Home  Missionary  Societ  y. 
Well,  but  has  nothing  special  to  report. 

Davies,  Thomas  Frederick,  Rt.  Rev.,  D.D.  (University 
Penn.  1871  and  Yale  1891),  LL.D.  (Hobart  1889),  Detroi  t, 
Mich. 

Professor  of  Hebrew,  Berkeley  Divinity  School,  and  sinc'e 
October,  1889,  Protestant  Episcopal  Bishop  of  the  Diocese  c'f 
Michigan. 

Douglass,  John  Coffee,  Lawyer  and  Real  Estate  business, 
Leavenworth,  Kan. 

Reports  no  changes  except  that  his  wedding  bells  were  ring¬ 
ing  for  a  second  marriage  the  day  following  the  class  reunion  ir* 
1888. 

Dowd,  Charles  Ferdinand,  Rev.,  Ph.D.  (Univer.  City  of 
Hew  York  1888),  Saratoga  Springs,  H.  Y. 

Proprietor  and  principal  of  Temple  Grove  Seminary.  His 
wife  is  living  and  six  children.  Some  of  them  married,  with 
families  of  their  own,  among  whom  Dowd  moves  in  the 
dignity  of  grandsire  and  in  strong  hope  of  reaching  before  he 
passes  from  the  stage  the  general  recognition  of  his  “  Standard 
Time,5'  and  the  full  chime  of  his  “  24  o’clock.” 

Dulles,  Andrew  Cheves,  Lawyer,  31 LJ  Walnut  st.,  Phila¬ 
delphia,  Pa. 

Reports  no  changes. 

Fellowes,  Frank  Watland,  Merchant  and  Artist,  Hew 
Haven,  Conn. 

Still  in  poor  health,  no  changes  to  report. 

Gilbert,  William  Thacher,  Rev.,  Hewtown,  Fairfield 
County,  Conn. 

Transferred  in  rotation  as  a  Methodist  preacher  since  1888 
from  Stepney,  Conn,  to  Pleasant  Yalley,  and  Roxbury,  Conn., 
to  Sandy  Hook,  and  now  (April,  1894)  to  Hewtown,  Conn.  Has 
one  married  daughter  with  three  children ;  another  with  one 


I 


17 


child.  One  daughter  lives  at  home,  the  other  lives  in  Prince¬ 
ton,  N.  J.  Brother  Gilbert  writes  as  to  his  field  of  work : 
suppose  I  can  he  as  faithful  here  as  anywhere.” 


Greene,  Jeremiah  Evarts,  Lawyer  and  Editor,  Worcester, 
Mass. 

Retired  from  the  “Worcester  Spy Postmaster  at  Worces¬ 
ter  and  on  the  Council  of  the  American  Antiquarian  Society. 
ISTo  changes  to  report. 


Harding,  Charles,  Rev.,  Sholapoor,  India. 

Missionary  of  the  A.  B.  C.  F.  M.,  actively  engaged  with  his 
wife  in  the  mission  work.  By  his  first  wife,  Julia  M.  Terry 
of  Plymouth,  Conn.,  he  had  five  children  ;  by  the  second,  Eliza¬ 
beth  D.  Ballantine,  Amherst,  Mass.,  also  five.  He  writes 
expressing  his  great  regret  that  he  could  not  take  his  place  in 
the  class  reunion  last  summer,  but  speaks  with  enthusiasm  of 
his  work,  its  noble  rewards  and  fruits.  Owing  to  the  recall 
of  some  of  his  associates,  he  and  his  wife  were  doing  double 
work.  The  cholera  had  been  raging  in  the  mission  villages 
where  it  had  raised  the  death  rate  to  69  in  the  thousand. 


Harland,  Edward,  Hon.,  Lawyer,  Norwich,  Conn. 

Bachelor,  twice  member  of  Connecticut  House  of  Repre¬ 
sentatives,  State  Senator  and  President  pro  tempore ,  Fellow 
of  Yale  ex  officio ,  Ad  j. -Gen.  of  Connecticut,  Judge  of  Probate. 

Hart,  Austin,  Lawyer,  New  Britain,  Conn. 

No  changes  to  report. 

Hedges,  Cornelius,  Lawyer,  Helena,  Montana. 

Wife  living.  Three  sons  and  two  daughters.  Pioneer  in 
Montana.  Five  years  Judge  of  County  Court,  U.  S.  Attorney, 
State  Senator  in  the  first  Legislature  after  the  admission  of 
Montana  to  the  Union.  Hedges  first  conceived  and  pub¬ 
licly  suggested  the  national  reservation  of  the  Yellowstone 
Park. 


18 


V 

Hinman,  William  Lamson,  Lawyer,  Cheshire,  Conn. 

Bachelor.  Has  been  in  Connecticut  Legislature  and  Judge 
of  Probate.  How  living  on  his  farm,  whence  in  response  to 
many  appeals  he  writes : 

“Am  at  present  living  a  quiet  uneventful  life  on  a  farm  in  Cheshire, 
Conn.  Bachelor.  Though  apparently  uninterested  yet  believe  me,  my 
heart  and  kindest  feelings  will  be  with  my  classmates  on  the  occasion 
of  their  40th  Anniversary.” 

Holmes,  Theodore  James,  Rev.,  Hewton  Centre,  Mass. 

Pastor  of  the  Congregational  Church.  Ho  changes  to 
report. 

Hough,  Jesse  Winegar,  Rev.,  D.D.  (Iowa  Col.  1877). 
Santa  Barbara,  Cal. 

In  poor  health,  suffering  from  a  form  of  paralysis.  Was 
for  several  years  the  successful  minister  of  the  American 
Chapel  in  Paris. 

Hoyt,  Henry  Thatcher,  Merchant,  Danbury,  Conn. 

Hothing  to  report. 

Hudson,  William  Miller,  Hartford,  Conn. 

Fish  Commissioner  of  Connecticut,  and  Auditor  of  the 
H.  Y.,  H.  H.  &  H.  R.  R.  Ho  changes  to  report. 

Johnson,  George  Ashbury,  Lawyer,  14  Sansome  st.,  San 
Francisco,  Cal. 

Justice  of  the  Circuit  Court  Indiana ;  ex- Attorney  General 
of  California. 

Johnston,  Josiah  Stoddard,  Lawyer  and  Editor,  203  E. 
Chestnut  st.,  Louisville,  Ky. 

In  1886  retired  from  the  Frankfort,  Ky.  Yeoman ,  as  editor 
and  co-proprietor,  now  engaged  in  u  the  lumber  and  mineral 
development  of  the  State.”  Lost  one  daughter  by  death, 
another  is  married  and  living  in  Hew  Orleans  (Mrs.  W.  B. 
Windom).  Johnston  was  one  of  the  pall-bearers  at  Gibson’s 
funeral. 


19 


{ 

Kent,  Albert  Emmett,  Merchant,  San  Rafaelle,  Cal. 

In  poor  health,  but  improved  under  the  treatment  in  the 
“  Rest-Cure,”  San  Francisco,  last  summer.  A  bas-relief  by 
Taft  of  Chicago  has  been  placed  in  his  honor  in  the  Kent 
Laboratory. 

Knevals,  Sherman  Willard,  Lawyer,  Mutual  Life  Build¬ 
ing,  Nassau  st.,  New  York. 

Head  of  one  of  the  most  successful  and  respected  law  firms 
in  the  city.  No  changes  to  report. 

Lewis,  Charlton  Thomas,  Ph.D.  (University  City  New 
York,  1877),  Morristown,  N.  J. 

Attorney  of  the  Mutual  Life  Insurance  Co.,  32  Nassau  st., 
New  York,  and  engaged  in  scholarly  and  literary  work. 

Lord,  Robert  McCurdy,  Physician,  Kansas  City,  Mo. 

In  June,  1889  lost  his  second  son  of  typhoid,  in  his  21st 
year.  On  Sunday,  Oct.  22,  1893,  Lord  was  again  afflicted  by 
the  sudden  death  of  his  wife  at  Chicago,  of  congestion  of  the 
brain.  Mrs.  Lord  had  shortly  before  inherited  a  large  estate 
from  an  uncle,  William  G.  Johnson,  of  Uncasville,  Conn. 
Two  only  of  their  five  children  are  living,  R.  M.  C.  Lord,  Jr., 
married,  and  Henry  Johnson  Lord,  a  minor.  Lord’s  own 
health  is  precarious.* 

McCormick,  James,  Lawyer,  Harrisburg,  Pa.,  P.  O.  box  548. 

No  changes  to  report  except  the  death  of  his  wife  about  two 
years  ago.  His  eldest  son  Herman  died  Jan.  25,  1867.  One 
daughter,  Eliza  living ;  one,  Mary,  died  in  March  11, 1867.  Four 
sons  have  been  graduated  at  Yale.  Henry  ’84,  James  ’87, 
William,  also  ’87,  Donald  ’90. 

McCully,  Charles  Gardiner,  Rev.,  Calais,  Me. 

Pastor  of  the  Congregational  Church  at  Calais.  No  changes 
to  report.  His  wife  is  living  and  two  daughters. 

McFarland,  Horace  Henry,  Rev.,  Woodhaven,  Long 

Island,  N.  Y. 

Has  left  the  Seaman’s  Friend  Society  and  is  engaged  on 
the  “  National  Cyclopedia  of  American  Biography.” 

*  As  these  sheets  are  going  to  press  I  learn  of  Lord’s  death.  See  page  37. 


« 


I 


I 


20 

MacVeagh,  Wayne,  LL.D.  (Amherst  1881),  Lawyer,  Phila¬ 
delphia,  Pa. 

P.  S.  Minister  Resident  Constantinople,  U.  S.  Attorney 
General.  Row  resident  in  Rome,  U.  S.  Ambassador  to  Italy. 
Greatly  afflicted  by  the  death  of  his  son  last  year. 

Olds,  Joseph,  LL.B.  (Harvard),  Lawyer,  Columbus,  Ohio. 

Has  been  on  the  Bench.  No  changes  to  report. 

Robinson,  Henry  Cornelius,  LL.D.  (Yale,  1888),  Lawyer, 
Hartford,  Conn. 

Reports  no  changes. 

Shiras,  George,  LL.D.  (Yale  1883),  Lawyer,  Justice  U.  S. 
Supreme  Court,  Washington,  D.  C. 

Reports  no  further  changes. 

Smalley,  George  Washburn,  correspondent  of  the  New 
York  Tribune ,  88  Chester  Place,  Hyde  Park  Square,  W. 
London. 

He  writes  under  the  date  of  26  June,  ’93  : 

‘  ‘  Many  thanks  for  your  letter  and  the  invitation.  I  wish  I  could  go 
but  I  fear  it  is  out  of  the  question.  The  meeting  comes  too  early  for  me. 

But  whether  with  you  or  not,  my  heart  goes  out  to  you.  I  agree  with 
you  there  is  no  attachment  quite  like  that  to  one’s  classmates  and  it  is 
doubly  strong  when  one  has  had  the  honor  of  belonging  to  such  a  class 
as  that  of  ’53. 

Pray  be  so  kind  as  to  give  my  best  remembrances  to  anyone  who  asks 
for  me.  It  is  useless  to  say  anything  of  one’s  loyalty  to  the  Class  or  to 
Yale.  Who  is  there  who  has  it  not  ?  And  for  none  do  we  cherish  a 
truer  affection  than  for  those  who  have  gone  before  us.  They  are  none 
the  less  of  us  and  with  us.  And  of  those  who  were  our  brothers  I  say 
the  same.” 

Smith,  Joel  Sumner,  Librarian  Linonian  and  Brothers 
Library  Yale  College,  New  Haven,  Conn. 

His  only  son,  the  Class  Boy,  Frederick  Sumner,  after  being 
graduated  at  Yale  in  ’79,  studied  medicine,  and  is  now  prac¬ 
ticing  at  Chester,  Conn.,  where  he  has  made  reputation  enough 
to  have  his  portrait  in  a  volume  of  distinguished  Connecticut 
medical  men. 


A 


Thomas,  John  G.,  Mellidgeville,  Georgia, 

Whence  he  writes  me  a  letter  full  of  affectionate  inte¬ 
rest  for  the  Class  and  of  regret  that  he  was  not  able  to  be 
at  the  reunion.  Personally  he  is  in  good  health  and  re¬ 
ports  no  changes  of  importance. 

r  it 


21 


Spooner,  Samuel  Brigham,  Lawyer,  Springfield,  Mass. 

For  30  years  Register  of  Probate  of  Hampden  County,  Mass. 


Nothing  to  report. 


Stearns,  Henry  Putnam,  Physician,  Hartford,  Conn. 

Supt.  Butler  Asylum  for  the  Insane,  and  Lecturer  on  Insanity 
in  the  Medical  course  at  Yale.  No  changes  to  report. 

Stedman,  Edmund  Clarence,  Poet — Broker,  45  E.  30th 
st.,  New  York. 

No  changes  to  report.  Devoted  to  the  class  as  ever.  Busi¬ 
ness  office  16  Broad  st.,  New  York. 

Stowell,  Alexander  David,  Rev.,  Binghamton,  N.  Y. 
Pastor  of  the  Congregational  Church  at  Binghamton.  Reports 
no  changes.  Two  sons  married  and  doing  well. 

One  daughter  married.  Two  unmarried. 

Thomas,  Charles  Lloyd,  Merchant,  Providence,  R.  I. 

One  son,  Edward  Seymour,  graduated  at  Yale  ’88  and  study¬ 
ing  for  the  ministry.  Another,  George  Herbert,  Sophomore 
J96.  Thomas  went  abroad  last  year  for  his  health,  and  is  still 
in  rather  poor  condition  but  improving. 

Tobey,  Salathiel  Harrison,  Broker  in  New  York. 
Office  8  Broad  st.  House  217  W.  45th  st. 

No  changes  to  report. 

Twining,  Kinsley,  D.D.  (Yale  1884),  L.H.D.  (Hamilton 
1893),  Morristown,  New  Jersey. 

Literary  editor  of  The  Independent ,  130  Fulton  st.,  New 
York.  No  changes  to  report. 

Waite,  Richard,  Lawyer,  Toledo,  Ohio. 

Head  of  the  law  firm  of  Waite  &  Snider.  Wife  living; 
also  three  sons  and  two  daughters.  One  son  graduated  last 
year  at  Rose  Polytechnic  Institute,  Indiana. 


22 


Warren,  Joseph,  Auditor  and  Accountant.  Exchange 
Building,  Room  614  Boston,  Mass. 

Bachelor.  Well  and  reports  no  further  changes. 

Welch,  Joseph  Ashley,  Lawyer  in  full  successful  practice, 
115  Broadway  New  York  City.  House  39  W.  17th  st. 

Reports  no  changes. 

Weston,  Theodore,  Architect,  31  Broad  st.,  New  York. 
House  W.  48th  st. 

Lost  his  first  wife,  Sarah  Chauncey  Winthrop,  Mar.  5,  1864. 
She  left  one  child.  He  married  Miss  Catherine  Boudinot 
Stimpson,  Feb.  21,  1879,  by  whom  he  has  two  children. 

White,  Andrew  Hickson,  LL.H.  (Yale  18S8,  University 
of  Michigan  1867,  and  Cornell  1880),  L.H.H.  (Columbia, 
1887),  Ph.H.  (Jena  1889),  Ithaca,  N.  Y. 

Prof.  Hist,  and  Eng.  Lit.  University  Michigan,  President 
Cornell  University,  U.  S.  Minister  to  Germany.  Now  resident 
in  St.  Petersburg  U.  S.  Minister  Plenipotentiary  to  Russia. 

Whiton,  James  Morris,  Rev.,  Pli.D.  (Yale  1861),  43  West 
47th  st.,  New  York. 

From  1886  to  1891  Congregational  minister  in  the  northern 
wards  of  New  York  where  he  was  instrumental  in  forming 
three  new  churches.  Being  somewhat  out  of  health  he 
retired  from  pastoral  work  in  1891  and  since  that  time  has 
been  engaged  in  teaching,  writing  and  occasional  preaching. 
His  summers  for  the  last  eight  years  have  been  spent  in  Great 
Britain  where  he  has  had  regular  engagements  in  the  Congre¬ 
gational  pulpits. 


Willard,  Andrew  Jackson,  minister  and  physician,  Bur¬ 
lington,  Yt. 

Left  the  active  ministry  and  having  qualified  himself  for  the 
practice  of  medicine  is  now  proprietor  and  director  of  a  suc¬ 
cessful  Sanitarium  at  Burlington,  Yt. 


23 


Woodward,  Asa  Burr,  Hon.  Lawyer,  Norwalk,  Conn. 

Reports  no  changes,  but  is  well  and  as  devoted  to  Yale  and 
the  class  as  ever. 

Young,  Robert  Semple,  Cotton  planter,  Natchez,  Miss. 
P.  O.  Box  54.  Bachelor. 

Young  seems  to  have  left  New  Orleans  permanently,  is 
well  and  glad  to  hear  from  his  classmates  whom  he  remembers 
with  affectionate  interest. 


ROLL  AND  OBITUARY  NOTICES 

OF  THOSE  WHO  HAVE  DIED  SINCE  JULY,  1883. 


For  notices  of  the  Twenty-one  members  of  the  Class  who  died  previous 
to  the  reunion  in  1883  reference  must  be  made  to  Train’s  book  published 
that  year. 


Aiken,  William  Pope.  Born  July  9,  1825,  Fairhaven, 
Mass.  Died  at  his  home,  Bntland,  Vt.,  March  29,  1884, 
get.  58  yrs.  8  mos.  and  20  days.  He  left  a  widow,  living 
at  Rutland,  two  sons  and  two  daughters.  The  elder  daughter 
married  Charles  W.  Perry,  Springfield,  Mass.  The  younger 
married  Chas.  A.  Gale,  a  physician  at  Rutland.  His  eldest 
son,  Edwin  Egerton,  was  graduated  in  the  Yale  Class  of 
’81,  and  is  now  a  missionary  of  the  A.  B.  C.  F.  M.  at 
Pekin,  China.  The  younger  son  graduated  in  the  Yale 
Class  of  ’89  and  studied  law  at  Hew  Haven.  Aiken’s  last 
days,  sad  as  they  were,  have  a  melancholy  interest.  He 
continued  to  suffer  from  a  complication  of  troubles  which  low¬ 
ered  his  vital  powers  and  preyed  on  his  spirits.  He  was  sure 
that  the  end  was  near  and  dwelt  much  on  college  friends  and 
friendships.  He  felt  keenly  the  disappointments  of  his  life 
and  the  partial  failure  of  his  early  promise.  But  amid  circum¬ 
stances  unfavorable  and  even  repressive  to  the  exercise  of  the 
qualities  which  were  characteristic  of  him  and  which  formed  a 
part  of  his  intellectual  as  well  as  his  moral  nature,  and  suffer¬ 
ing  as  he  did  from  periods  of  prolonged  physical  and  mental 
pain,  his  thoughts  still  turned  to  his  college  class,  and  his 
Christian  faith  never  ceased  to  give  him  satisfaction  and  sup¬ 
port.  The  final  attack  was  brief  and  of  such  severity  that 
after  two  distressing  days  his  natural  powers  even  to  suffer 
failed  and  he  sank  into  a  stupor  which  continued  to  the  end. 
The  notes  of  his  personal  and  professional  history  as  a  minister 
of  the  gospel  are  given  in  full  by  Train  in  the  Class-book  of 
1883. 


26 


Billings,  Edward  Coke,  (LL.D.  Yale  1890).  Justice 
U.  S.  District  Court,  Louisiana.  Born  Dec.  3,  1829,  Hat¬ 
field,  Mass.  Died  Hew  Haven,  Conn.,  Dec.  1,  1893,  aet. 
64  yrs.,  of  heart  failure  complicated  with  trouble  of  the 
kidneys  which  was  understood  to  be  the  result  of  an  attack 
of  typhoid  fever  the  year  previous,  from  which  he  never 
fully  recovered.  He  had  been  in  precarious  health  for 
some  time  previous  to  his  death.  His  wife,  Emily  San¬ 
ford  Armstrong,  daughter  of  the  late  Hervey  Sanford  of 
Hew  Haven,  and  widow  of  Capt.  James  Francis  Arm¬ 
strong,  died  in  1886.  Her  wedded  life  with  Billings  had  been 
ideal.  Her  death  broke  his  heart  and  this  world  was  never 
again  to  him  what  it  had  been.  He  converted  her  house 
in  H ew  Haven  into  a  memorial  and  looked  forward  with  eager 
impatience  to  reunion  in  the  world  to  come. 

Billings  was  appointed  by  Gen.  Grant  Judge  of  the  United 
States  Court  of  the  Louisiana  District  and  held  this  office  at 
his  death.  Having  been  appointed  in  1876  he  would  have 
been  retired  in  about  two  years  under  the  twenty  years  rule. 

He  had  won  a  first-rate  reputation  on  the  bench  for  legal 
and  judicial  ability  and  for  the  high,  dignified  and  impartial 
administration  of  the  office. 

He  had  no  children.  By  will  he  left  a  legacy  of  $70,000  to 
the  University. 

Burr,  Hudson.  Born  Jan.  23,  1830,  Torrington,  Conn. 
Died  at  his  home,  Bloomington,  Ill.,  Feb.  16,  1891,  61  years, 
24  days  old,  of  a  slow  but  progressive  paralysis  which  had 
troubled  him  more  or  less  for  fifteen  years.  His  wife,  Lucy 
Belton,  daughter  of  Bobert  Belton,  of  AVolcott,  Conn.,  sur¬ 
vives  him,  with  one  son,  Charles  IL.  Burr,  who  had  been 
associated  with  his  father  in  his  law  office,  and  was  graduated 
at  Yale  in  ’83 ;  and  one  daughter,  Emma  Belton,  now  wife 
of  Clinton  B.  Soper,  a  successful  manufacturer.  Mrs.  Burr's 
address  is  corner  Brairie  and  Chestnut  streets,  Bloomington, 
Ill.  Burr  was  considered  the  best  office  lawyer  in  Bloom¬ 
ington,  and  was  prominent  in  the  Second  Bresbyterian  Church 
of  the  town.  He  did  gallant  service  in  the  army  before 
Vicksburg,  on  the  Boanoke  and  elsewhere.  I  saw  Burr  last 


27 


in  March,  1885,  at  Sandford,  'Fla.,  whither  he  had  gone 
for  rest  and  health.  The  grip  of  the  last  enemy  was  on 
him,  and  he  could  not  sustain  continued  exertion,  but  he  was 
bright  and  clear  in  his  mind,  sweet  as  a  rose,  gentle,  affection¬ 
ate,  and  full  of  happy  and  hopeful  thoughts. 

Catlin,  Julius.  Born  Hartford,  Conn.,  April  11, 1833.  Died 
at  the  Bestigouclie  Fishing  Club  House,  Hova  Scotia,  July  20, 
1893,  set.  60  years  and  3  months,  of  heart  failure.  He  re¬ 
mained  to  the  last  youthful  in  appearance,  striking  in  person 
and  carriage,  vigorous  in  mind  and  body,  and  never  in  the 
possession  of  sounder  judgment  nor  better  able  to  grasp  the  de¬ 
tails  of  his  large  commission  business  in  Hew  York.  He  passed 
a  life  of  varied  activity  within  the  limits  of  a  mercantile  career 
and  conducted  a  large  business  honorably  and  successfully.  He 
was  a  member  of  many  boards  of  Directors  of  large  corpora¬ 
tions  as  well  as  of  the  Hew  England  Society,  and  carried  to 
these  positions  great  intelligence,  sterling  integrity,  honorable 
sentiments  and  conscientious  devotion.  His  friends  were  many, 
both  in  the  higher  social  circles  and  in  the  dependent  classes  and 
among  his  employees,  who  had  learned  to  lean  on  him  as  a  man 
of  heart  as  well  as  sense.  In  him  good  and  generous  feeling 
raised  the  affluence  of  life  to  a  nobler  kind  of  property.  Com¬ 
bined  with  this  was  a  sound  and  solid  judgment  which  lay  at 
the  bottom  of  his  uninterrupted  success,  and  enabled  him  to 
say  as  he  once  did  to  me,  that  he  had  made  no  serious  losses 
in  business.  Seven  of  his  classmates  were  present  at  his 
funeral  in  St.  George’s  Chapel,  Hew  York. 

He  lived  during  the  winter  in  Hew  York.  His  summer  home 
was  at  Morristown,  H.  J.,  where  he  lies  buried,  and  where 
Mrs.  Catlin,  who  survives  him,  with  two  younger  daughters 
now  live.  The  elder  daughter  married  Trenor  L.  Park. 

Cobb,  Oliver  Ellsworth.  Minister  of  the  Dutch  Eef. 
Church.  Born  March  21, 1833,  in  Hew  York  City.  Died  in 
the  family  home  overlooking  the  Hudson,  at  Tarrytown,  Sept. 
23d,  1891,  58  years  and  6  months  (lacking  two  days)  old,  of 
Hodgkins’  disease,  a  progressive  anaemia  attended  with  inflam¬ 
mation  and  enlargement  of  the  lymphatic  glands.  He  had  pre¬ 
viously  resigned  his  position  as  pastor  of  the  old  Dutch  Be- 


28 


formed  Church  at  Flushing,  where  he  had  completed  an  honora¬ 
ble  pastorate  of  seventeen  years.  He  had  but  one  other  in  the 
Reformed  Church  at  Hopewell,  Dutchess  County,  H.  Y.,  where 
he  was  stationed  fifteen  years.  To  the  unanimous  regret  of  his 
people  he  retired  with  his  family  to  his  old  home,  hoping  that 
a  year  or  two  of  rest  would  restore  him.  To  his  great  de¬ 
light  his  Sundays  were  occupied  with  occasional  preaching, 
and  he  continued  to  preach  in  this  way  to  the  second  Sun¬ 
day  in  September,  1891,  the  13th  day  of  the  month.  He 
returned  home  to  die,  and  on  the  23d  breathed  his  last  in 
the  peace  of  J esus.  What  he  was  as  a  man,  a  scholar  and  a 
minister,  I  do  not  think  that  even  we  who  should  know  him 
best  fully  understand.  My  first  contact  with  him  was  when 
as  a  rarely  attractive  boy  of  a  type  I  had  never  then  seen,  he 
came  to  my  father’s  house  at  Middlebury,  Yt.  He  was  one  of 
those  men  who,  having  settled  the  account  with  God  and  his 
own  conscience,  seemed  wholly  to  leave  out  of  view  the  third 
relation  of  a  gifted  man,  to  his  reputation  and  fame  among  men. 
Extreme  diffidence  prevented  him  from  being  known  at  his 
real  worth  by  the  church.  Content  to  perform  with  the  utmost 
conscientiousness,  and  the  devotion  of  all  his  powers, — which 
were  large  and  varied — the  duty  he  owed  to  the  people  of  his 
charge,  he  shrank  from  exerting  himself  in  wider  fields,  and 
only  could  with  the  utmost  difficulty  be  prevailed  upon  to 
show  himself  on  a  broader  platform.  But  in  his  circle  he 
completely  won  and  held  the  affection  of  both  the  churches 
to  which  he  ministered.  A  beautiful  memorial  window  per¬ 
petuates  his  memory  in  the  new  church  at  Flushing. 

His  wife  and  five  children  survive  him.  Rev.  Henry  E vert- 
son,  the  oldest  son,  is  pastor  of  the  West  Side  Collegiate 
Church,  77th  street,  Hew  York.  His  oldest  daughter,  Jennie 
P.,  was  married  to  Mr.  George  Bunker,  April  19,  1893,  and 
lives  in  Yonkers.  The  other  children  are  A.  Polhemus,  52 
Wall  street,  Hew  York;  Sophie  H.,  at  Tarrytown,  H.  Y.,  and 
Eliza  P.,  of  the  class  of  1893  at  Vassar  College. 

French,  Joseph  Shelton.  Born  Feb.  9,  1833,  Bridge¬ 
port,  Conn.  Died  June  17,  1890,  set.  57  years  and  1  months 
(lacking  2  days),  in  Salmon  City,  Idaho,  where  he  was  living 


29 


with  his  second  wife,  who  survives  him.  French  studied  medi¬ 
cine  and  made  some  unsuccessful  attempts  to  practice  it.  F ailing 
in  this  he  bought  out  an  old  business  at  twice  its  worth  and 
made  another  failure  as  a  druggist.  He  started  once  more 
in  the  nursery  gardening  business  at  Bridgeport,  and  finding 
that  unprofitable  fled  W est  and  returning  to  his  old  profession, 
made  another  attempt  in  medicine  with  the  same  result  as 
before.  He  returned  for  a  time  to  Bridgeport  and  then 
went  to  Idaho  in  failing  health  and  buried  himself  so  com¬ 
pletely  from  his  friends  that  it  has  only  been  with  difficulty 
that  I  have  recovered  these  meager  details.  His  story  is  a  sad 
one.  Dr.  Charles  Bay  Palmer,  to  whose  church  in  Bridge¬ 
port  he  belonged,  writes  me  that  he  took  life  on  the  hard  side 
and  that  life  turned  its  hard  side  to  him.  Other  correspond¬ 
ents  agree  with  Dr.  Palmer  in  saying  that  he  was  at  bottom 
true  and  honest,  but  did  not  know  how  to  front  the  world,  was 
somewhat  visionary  and  had  more  than  his  share  of  ill-luck. 
His  first  wife  died  in  1862,  leaving  one  child,  George  La  Field. 
For  his  second  wife  he  married  Catherine  Spence  Brown,  of 
Bridgeport,  Oct.  17,  1863,  and  leaves  by  her  two  daughters 
and  three  sons  living  with  their  mother  in  Idaho. 

Gibson,  Kandall  Lee.  Born  Sept.  10,  1832,  Spring  Hill, 
Woodford  County,  Ky.  Died  Dec.  15,  1892,  set.  60  years, 
3  months  and  5  days  old,  at  Hot  Springs,  Ark.,  whither  he 
had  gone  for  relief  from  an  affection  of  the  heart  contracted 
during  the  war,  a  peculiar  form  of  rheumatism  to  which  he 
was  a  martyr.  His  wife  preceded  him  to  the  grave,  and  he 
now  sleeps  by  her  side  in  Kentucky,  on  whose  soil  lie  was 
born.  Three  sons  survive  him,  Montgomery,  a  physician  tem¬ 
porarily  in  New  York;  Bichardson,  in  the  Yale  Law  School ; 
Preston,  at  school  in  Washington,  D.  C.  He  lost  a  daughter, 
Louisiana  Hart,  in  early  life,  also  a  son,  Bandall  Lee. 

Gibson’s  career  was  a  full  one  and  contained  in  it  so  much 
which  is  on  the  one  hand  of  public  interest  and  on  the  other 
so  little  known  even  to  those  most  interested  in  it  as  to  require 
some  addition  to  the  meager  notes  in  the  class-book  of  1883. 
In  his  make  up  as  a  man  Gibson  combined  the  clear  cut,  well 
defined  and  intelligent  conscientiousness  of  New  England  with 


30 


a  high  Southern  sense  of  honor.  This  is  the  clue  to  his  career. 
It  explains  the  hold  stand  he  took  against  the  secession  mad¬ 
ness  of  the  South,  so  long  as  that  was  a  debatable  question 
in  the  South.  It  explains  his  action  when  the  Southern 
States  took  their  position.  Something  must  be  added  to  it,  drawn 
from  the  fiery  personal  inspiration  and  fighting  power  of  a 
good  soldier  that  lay  in  him,  to  explain  the  staying  power  of 
his  command  in  battle  and  the  fine  service  he  was  able  to  ren¬ 
der  in  handling  a  regiment  or  a  brigade.  His  service  as  a 
commander  of  Division  in  the  defence  of  Spanish  Fort  at 
Mobile  Harbor  indicates  that  he  had  by  that  time  developed 
ability  for  large  commands. 

The  close  of  the  war  brought  him  back  to  his  original 
national  relations.  He  was  never  a  slaveholder  on  the  ground 
of  theoretic  conviction  but  only  on  the  compulsion  of  what  he 
recognized  as  the  logic  of  events.  There  is  nothing  in  his  mil¬ 
itary  history  to  show  that  his  national  feeling  weakened  his 
Southern  devotion,  but  he  took  no  pains  to  conceal  the  painful¬ 
ness  of  the  part  he  believed  to  be  his  duty,  nor  the  great  and 
joyful  relief  he  had  in  finding  himself  again  on  national  ground. 
From  this  moment  the  nobleness  and  firmness  of  the  man 
shine  out,  worthy  of  the  best  days  of  the  Kepublic,  and  this 
is  what  I  wish  to  commemorate  in  these  notes.  There  is  more 
to  it  than  is  involved  in  saving  that  he  came*  back  into  the 

fJ  O 

Union  with  a  whole  and  unbroken  allegiance  or  that  he  devoted 
himself  like  a  man  to  restore  his  fortunes,  broken  in  the  war. 
The  South  had  its  trials  and  its  crises.  The  Tilden  election 
business  in  1877  was  one  of  them,  a  far  more  dangerous  crisis 
than  everyone  now-a-days  may  think,  and  a  great  chance  for  a 
demagogue.  Gibson  was  a  warm  friend  of  Mr.  Tilden  and  he 
knew  just  what  he  was  doing  when  he  threw  his  influence  for 
the  Commission.  But  he  did  it  and  faced  the  storm  at  home. 
The  greenback  currency  madness  raged  in  Louisiana  and  the 
lower  House  instructed  him  to  vote  for  rag  money  but  Gibson 
took  his  instructions  in  such  a  matter  from  a  higher  source  and 
voted  steadily  for  honest  money. 

There  is  reason  to  believe  that  when  Mr.  Hayes  became 
President  all  this  singular  independence,  purity  and  courage 
drew  his  attention  to  the  Senator  from  Louisiana  and  had  its 


31 


influence  with  him  in  leading  him  to  withdraw  the  troops  from 
the  South. 

Capt.  Eads’  jetties  at  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi  might  not 
have  been  there  without  Gibson  and  the  protection  of  the 
hanks  of  the  river  by  rebuilding,  reconstructing  and  extending 
the  levees  had  no  other  such  support  as  his. 

The  last  great  public  interest  of  his  life  and  which  he  carried 
with  him  to  the  grave  was  the  founding  and  development  of 
Tulane  University.  Gibson  was  not  the  man  to  repeat  in  New 
Orleans  what  White  could  do  and  has  done  at  Cornell,  but  his 
part  in  this  matter  brings  him  into  connection,  if  not  into  com¬ 
parison  with  White.  Paul  Tulane  was  a  wealthy  Jerseyman 
living  at  Princeton  who  had  made  his  money  in  Louisiana. 
When  the  project  of  the  university  first  presented  itself  to  his 
mind  he  sent  for  Gibson  as  the  man  best  fitted  in  Louisiana  to 
give  him  the  aid  and  direction  he  required.  He  took  up  the 
work  which  thus  opened  before  him  with  great  enthusiasm  and 
not  only  gave  the  noble-minded  founder  the  aid  he  required 
but  performed  for  the  South  and  the  cause  of  higher  education 
in  this  country  a  service  second  only  to  that  of  Mr.  Tulane 
himself  and  a  service  for  which  he  was  well  prepared  not  only 
by  his  New  England  training  and  academic  pride  but  by  his 
previous  work  as  one  of  the  administrators  of  the  Howard 
Memorial  Library  of  New  Orleans,  a  Pegent  of  the  Smithson¬ 
ian  at  Washington,  and  a  Trustee  of  the  Peabody  Education 
Fund.  He  was  an  habitual  reader,  a  good  lawyer,  an  observant 
traveler,  possessed  ample  means,  had  a  happy  home  and  a  devoted 
family.  The  loss  of  his  wife  was  the  keenest  affliction  that 

befell  him.  He  believed  the  disease  to  which  he  was  a  martvr 

«/ 

made  life  for  him  at  all  times  uncertain,  and  he  thought  much 
in  advance  of  death  and  found  new  comfort  in  the  Christian 
faith,  which  for  many  years  he  had  professed  and  illustrated. 
To  a  friend  he  remarked  at  this  time,  “  I  have  reached  the  con¬ 
clusion  that  outside  of  the  broad  principles  of  religion  there  is 
no  hope  for  mortals  here  below  or  hereafter.”  In  a  codicil  to 
his  will  he  solemnly  bequeathes  his  faith  to  his  sons  and  en¬ 
joins  on  them  to  remember  that  the  thing  more  difficult  to 
build  than  a  fortune  and  more  easily  lost  is  character  and  that 
the  only  safe  foundation  for  this  is  the  ten  commandments  and 
the  Sermon  on  the  Mount. 

3 


32 


Among  the  very  last  autographs  he  penned,  I  think  it  was 
the  last,  was  his  signature  of  a  letter  introducing  a  friend  to 
White  at  St.  Petersburg. 

Having  named  White  I  cannot  do  better  than  to  print  here 
a  part  of  his  letter  to  Bacon  on  Gibson. 

Legation  of  the  United  States, 

St.  Petersburg.  Jan.  21,  1893. 

My  dear  Theodore : 

I  have  been  for  some  time  past  intending  to  write  you  but  when  I 
turned  over  the  leaves  of  a  Yale  catalogue  which  came  yesterday  and 
saw  the  name  “Henry  Selden  Bacon,”  my  intentions  were  brought  to  a 
head  and  this  letter  is  the  result. 

I  note  also  the  name  of  Bishop  Fred.  Davies’  boy  in  the  class  below, 
and  two  or  three  others,  whom  I  suppose  to  be  sons  of  old  college  mates 
of  ours,  including  sundry  Leonard  Bacons . 

It  would  have  given  me  a  mournful  pleasure  to  be  present  in  order  to 
say  a  word  regarding  Randall  Gibson ;  I  doubt  whether  any  one  in  the 
Class  lias  seen  as  much  of  him  and  known  him  so  well  since  graduation 
as  I  have.  Shortly  after  I  left  Yale  we  were  in  various  parts  of  France 
and  Germany  together ;  I  also  met  him  at  various  times  afterward  in  New 
Orleans  and  Washington,  being  his  guest  in  the  latter  city,  and  frequently 
corresponded  with  him  ;  we  had  rooms  together  a  few  years  ago  at  Hom- 
burg  and  were  in  company  on  the  Rhine,  in  Belgium,  at  Paris  and  London. 
The  more  I  knew  of  him,  the  more  I  came  to  admire  and  respect  him  ;  as 
a  Senator  he  was  an  honor  to  his  State  and  the  country,  and  his  services 
in  founding  Tulane  University  were  of  the  highest. 

I  do  not  remember  whether  I  ever  told  you  about  our  first  meeting 
after  the  war. 

I  was  walking  up  Broadway  early  in  June  and  suddenly  came  upon 
Randall  looking  not  a  day  older  than  when  I  had  last  seen  him ;  he 
seemed  to  wait  a  moment  for  me,  but  I  took  him  heartily  by  the  hand 
and  insisted  on  his  coming  to  dine  with  me  ;  at  dinner  I  said,  “Randall, 
I  suppose  you  are  going  to  the  Yale  Commencement  next  week,”  he 
answered  “No,  I  have  not  expected  to  go;  there  will  be  hardly  any¬ 
body  there  who  will  care  to  see  me”  ;  I  answered,  “You  are  greatly  mis¬ 
taken,  you  are  just  the  man  they  would  wish  to  see;”  and  I  spoke  so 
earnestly  about  it  that  at  last  he  consented  to  go  and  in  due  time  went, 
receiving,  as  you  will  remember,  a  most  cordial  greeting  from  everybody. 

At  various  times  we  had  earnest  talks  upon  public  affairs  and  I  came 
to  respect  more  and  more  his  honesty  and  ability ;  his  position  in  some 
respects  was  singular ;  he  was  a  Democrat  who  worshipped  Alexander 
Hamilton  and  abhorred  Thomas  Jefferson ;  his  firmness  in  both  House 
and  Senate  against  inflation  theories  and  practices  was  of  great  value  to 
the  country,  and  his  steady  opposition  to  corrupt  domination  in  Louisi¬ 
ana  was  also  of  the  greatest  service . 


33 


As  to  Ned  Seymour  it  seems  hard  to  believe  that  he  is  gone ;  some 
days  before  receiving  your  letter  I  saw  a  reference  to  the  death  of  the 
Hon.  Edward  Seymour,  but  hoped  that  it  was  another  man. 

So  we  go,  my  dear  old  Friend  ! 

To  this  letter,  I  think,  I  will  add  one  brief  note  on  my  own 
account.  I  chanced  to  have,  at  the  time  White  alludes  to, 
some  talk  with  Gibson  which  made  on  me  the  impression 
which  White  describes.  I  thought  the  man  was  true,  loyal, 
and  solidly  back  on  national  ground,  but  shy  and  doubtful  as  to 
the  reception  he  would  have  among  such  an  intensely  Northern 
lot  of  men  as  the  Yale  graduates.  I  went  to  Professor  Thacher 
who  in  those  days  managed  the  Alumni  meetings  and  spoke 
of  the  matter  pointing  out  the  public  interests  involved  and 
urging  that  there  was  a  chance  that  might  bear  good  fruit  at 
the  South  as  well  as  the  North.  He  took  the  point  in  a 
moment.  I  was  authorized  to  ask  Gibson  to  speak.  He  was 
still  shy  and  rather  overwhelmed.  But  he  spoke,  and  spoke 
like  a  man.  His  reception  was  just  what  it  should  be.  From 
that  moment  I  believe  Gibson  was  wholly,  and  without  one  cloud 
or  doubt,  back  in  his  old  and  natural  connections.  I  saw  him 
but  once  again,  when  he  came  to  me  in  the  Senate  at  Washing¬ 
ton  to  propose  to  do  me  a  service  which  no  other  man  in  the 
country  could  render,  which  no  money  could  repay,  but  for 
which  I  owe  him,  and  shall  owe  him  till  I  die,  a  friend’s  grat¬ 
itude. 

Gillespie,  James  Metcalf.  Born  March  6,  1832,  Natchez, 
Miss.  Died  Oct.  17, 1892,  60  years,  and  11  days  old  at  Roclies- 
ter,  N.  Y.,  alone  at  a  hotel  with  no  friend  or  attendant  except 
a  young  classmate  of  his  son,  of  septic  pneumonia,  caused  prob¬ 
ably  by  blood  poisoning  as  the  result  of  an  operation  for  poly¬ 
pus  in  the  nostril. 

At  the  end  of  a  summer  tour  through  the  far  West,  he 
came  to  Rochester  for  medical  treatment  and  notified  Bacon 
of  his  presence,  who  saw  him  and  invited  him  to  make  his 
house  his  home.  Gillespie  was  then  in  full  health  and  vigor, 
physical  and  mental,  but  being  under  treatment  declined  the 
friendly  proffer. 


34 


No  serious  results  were  apprehended  but  sudden  alarming 
symptoms  set  in  and  before  our  classmate  could  reach  him  he 
was  dead,  a  stranger  in  a  hotel,  1500  miles  from  his  wife,  and 
his  only  son  away. 

His  home  was  in  Tensas  Parish,  La.,  where  he  was  greatly 
respected  as  a  public  spirited  citizen  and  one  of  the  model 
planters  of  the  South.  He  took  a  deep  interest  in  the  anti- 
lottery  struggle  in  Louisiana,  and  by  organizing  the  forces  and 
compelling  a  fair  vote  contributed  as  much  as  any  one  man  in 
the  State  to  the  overthrow  of  the  lottery.  Everything  about 
him  physical,  mental,  and  moral  was  strong  and  strongly 
marked.  Owner  of  a  thousand  slaves,  he  did  not  believe  in 
slavery  and  kept  aloof  from  the  secession.  Honest,  inflexible, 
vigorous,  he  was  a  stern  man  to  reckon  with  who  had  in  him 
a  kind  heart  to  appeal  to.  His  gifts  were  many,  large  and 
silently  bestowed.  He  was  a  good  hater  and  a  faithful,  pains¬ 
taking  friend.  His  intimacies  were  few,  but  close.  His  busi¬ 
ness  experience  was  large  and  his  judgment  respected.  Public 
life  did  not  attract  him,  though  once,  without  his  consent,  as  I 
have  understood,  his  name  was  placed  on  the  defeated  Repub¬ 
lican  State  ticket  as  Lieut.  Governor.  He  did  consent  on 
several  occasions  to  accept  offices  of  trust  in  which  the  public 
interest  was  involved. 

In  his  home  his  finer  traits  shone  out  to  the  best  advantage, 
in  gracious  hospitality,  in  thoughtful  attention  to  every  friend 
or  stranger  within  his  gates  and  in  the  personal  power  to 
charm. 

With  all  his  business  cares  and  occupation  he  found  ample 
time  to  read  and  his  retentive  memory  was  stored  with  the 
fruits  of  studious  leisure.  His  great  executive  ability  enabled 
him  to  “  leap  the  chasm  ”  between  slave  labor  and  free,  with¬ 
out  loss  and  to  give  the  New  South  one  of  its  conspicuous 
examples  of  the  profitableness  of  the  new  order.  He  was  one 
of  the  rare  examples  of  the  Southern  ancienne  noblesse  incor¬ 
porated  into  the  jeune  noblesse  without  loss  of  ancient  dignity 
or  penalty  of  poverty. 

Gleason,  William  Henry,  D.D.  (Rutgers,  1881).  Born 
Sept.  28,  1833,  Durham,  Conn.  Died  of  chronic  kidney  dis¬ 
ease  at  his  home  in  New  York,  Feb.  21,  1892,  get.  58  years  4 


35 


months  and  24  days.  His  wife,  Lila  Seward,  survives  him 
(address  600  West  End  ave.,  New  York  City).  Four  children 
also  survive  him,  Ella,  Mrs.  Bogardus,  living  at  Hudson,  N.  Y., 
Anne,  Mrs.  George  Athelbert  Walsh,  New  York  City.  W. 
Stanton,  a  physician  at  Newburgh,  N.  Y.,  and  Arthur  Hunt¬ 
ington,  now  living  with  his  mother  and  preparing  for  Yale. 
From  the  Reformed  Dutch  Church  in  Newark  where  he  was 
settled  when  Train  published  the  class-book  of  1883,  Gleason 
went  to  Hudson  where  he  had  an  ideal  pastorate,  idolized  by  his 
people  and  devoted  to  them.  His  health  failing,  the  family  re¬ 
moved  to  New  York,  Oct.,  1889.  He  suffered  greatly  at  times 
and  was  kept  up  only  by  the  best  medical  skill  and  nursing.  His 
Christian  patience  and  sweetness  never  failed.  Mrs.  Gleason 
writes :  “  I  cannot  conceive  greater  happiness  this  side  of 
heaven  than  we  often  experienced’’  in  the  intervals  of  his 
distress.  In  a  year  he  was  able  to  preach  again  occasionally 
and  did  so  with  great  delight  to  himself  and  with  a  marked 
increase  of  spiritual  power  added  to  his  old  gifts  which  never 
failed  to  produce  its  natural  results  on  the  congregation.  He 
knew  what  the  end  must  be  and  looked  forward  to  it  without 
fear.  “  It  is  all  sunshine,”  was  his  word  to  his  wife.  Gleason 
as  we  all  knew  began  life  in  the  law  and  was  soon  sent  to  the 
Assembly,  ran  for  Congress  in  the  1st  District,  and  was  elected 
Register  in  Bankrupcy.  He  always  told  me  that  his  training  as 
a  lawyer  had  been  very  useful  to  him  in  the  ministry.  All  of 
us  may  not  know  so  well  that  it  was  the  reaction  of  his  experi¬ 
ences  in  these  paths  of  ambition  on  a  singularly  pure  and 
sensitive  Christian  conscience  which  led  him  to  leave  them  as 
he  did  for  the  less  worldly  calling  of  the  Christian  ministry. 
He  never  for  one  moment  regretted  the  decision.  He  was 
wholly  at  peace  and  as  his  wife  writes  me  “  royally  happy  ” 
even  in  great  suffering.  This  was  characteristic,  part  of  the 
spiritual  health  and  integrity  of  the  man.  His  devotion  to  his 
college  class  remained  unimpaired,  and  survives  in  his  wife  and 
his  children. 

Hart,  Augustine.  Bom  Dec.  18,  1829,  Burlington,  Conn. 
Died  of  albumenaria  at  Council  Bluffs,  la.,  April  26,  1892, 
aet.  59  years  and  4  months.  Married  twice.  His  second  wife 


36 


survives  him.  Engaged  as  a  teacher  until  about  1875  when 
he  took  up  the  occupation  of  a  book  agent,  canvassing  particu¬ 
larly  for  Appleton’s  Cyclopedia.  By  the  first  wife  he  left 
one  daughter,  Mrs.  Carrie  B.  Hart  Judd,  Bethlehem,  Conn., 
who  has  five  children.  By  the  second  wife  who  survives  him, 
he  had  a  daughter  and  a  son.  His  end  was  peaceful  and  with¬ 
out  pain. 

Heard,  Albert  Farley.  Born,  Ipswich,  Mass.,  Oct.  4th, 
1833.  Died  at  Washington,  D.  C.,  March  25, 1890,  set.  56  years, 
6  months  and  21  days,  of  the  grip,  complicated  with  other  trou¬ 
bles  contracted  in  China.  After  graduation  he  settled  immedi¬ 
ately  in  China,  for  more  than  twenty  years,  with  occasional  visits 
home.  He  was  connected  with  the  great  house  of  Augustine 
Heard  &  Co.,  first  as  clerk  and  then  as  partner.  For  a  time  he 
was  Consul  General  for  Russia  at  Shanghai.  In  1868  he 
married  Mary  Livingston,  of  Livingston,  H.  Y.  She  died 
before  him.  The  firm  to  which  he  belonged  became  involved 
and  suffered  losses  which  led  to  its  honorable  discontinuance. 
Heard  was  afterwards  private  secretary  to  Mr.  Endicott, 
Secretary  of  War  during  Mr.  Cleveland’s  first  administration. 
He  was  later  Librarian  of  the  War  Department,  and  died  hold¬ 
ing  that  position.  He  was  the  author  of  a  large  and  valuable 
work,  “  The  Russian  Church  and  Dissent/’  published  in  1887, 
which  will  be  spoken  of  again  in  reviewing  the  literary  work 
of  the  class. 

Jones,  John  Andrews  Williamson.  Born  Sept.  4,  1832. 
Died  at  the  Indiana  Hospital  for  the  Insane  of  chronic  mania 
caused  by  disease  of  the  middle  cerebral  artery,  March  28, 
1889,  56  years  7  months  and  24  days  old,  leaving  a  wife  who 
is  now  married  again  and  living  somewhere  in  S.  Dakota,  and 
a  son  now  about  23  years  old,  Horace  B.  Jones,  educated  by 
an  uncle  of  the  same  name  (who  also  died  Jan.  21,  1890),  at 
the  Ross  Polyteclinian  Institute,  Terre  Haute,  Ind.  This  son 
is  said  to  be  in  Alaska.  Jones’  only  brother  John  who  for  sev¬ 
eral  years  supported  him  and  his  son  Horace,  died  in  1891,  a 
bachelor  lawyer  greatly  respected.  Jones  was  himself  fairly 
successful  until  overwhelmed  by  disease.  He  was  a  true  man, 


37 


kind  to  liis  friends  and  his  family  but  overwhelmed  by  the 
great  misfortune  which  befell  him. 

Kline,  George  Washington.  Born,  Lebanon  Pa.,  March 
13,  1833.  Died  Oct.  15,  1889,  aged  56  years  7  months  and  two 
days,  at  his  home  in  Lebanon,  Pa.  His  wife  survives  him. 
They  had  no  children.  He  was  occupied  with  the  care  of  his 
estate  and  of  an  invalid  mother  to  whom  he  was  devoted.  His 
tastes  were  those  of  an  educated  man.  He  was  an  earnest 
member  of  the  Lutheran  church  and  bore  with  Christian  forti¬ 
tude  the  sufferings  of  the  three  months  illness  which  ended  in 
his  death. 

Lord,  Bobert  McCurdy.  Born,  Lyme,  Conn.,  Jan.  10, 
1833.  Died  at  San  Diego,  Cal.,  May  11, 1894,  61  years  and  4 
months  old. 

[The  news  of  Lord’s  death  comes  too  late  for  a  fuller  notice.  The  notes  of  his 
recent  life  will  be  found  on  page  19.] 


Palfrey,  George.  Born,  Hew  Orleans,  Dec.  20,  1829. 
Died  at  his  home  in  Hew  Orleans,  of  slow  progressive  paralysis, 
June  11th,  1891,  61  years  5  months  and  22  days  old,  leaving 
his  wife  and  two  sons,  the  younger  married,  who  has  one  child 
born  before  his  grandfather’s  death,  though  he  probably  was 
not  able  to  realize  the  fact.  For  nine  years  and  three  months 
he  had  been  in  decline,  watched  with  beautiful  devotion  by  an 
accomplished  and  loving  wife.  At  last  he  sank  into  total  blind¬ 
ness  but  amid  all  his  loss  of  mental  power  retained  the  warmth 
of  his  affections  and  the  sweetness  of  his  nature.  For  months 
he  had  not  been  able  to  speak  so  that  he  could  be  understood, 
and  for  years  before  his  death  had  not  been  able  to  move  his 
entire  body.  His  Yale  class-book  afforded  him  more  pleasure 
than  anything  else,  and  as  his  devoted  wife  read  and  re-read 
it  to  him  continued  to  interest  him  when  other  resources  failed. 

Penniman,  James  Lanman.  Born,  Cincinnati,  July  9,  1832. 
Died  of  heart  failure  brought  on  by  rheumatic  gout  at  his  home 
in  Philadelphia,  August  2, 1890,  58  years  and  7  days  old,  leaving 
his  wife  Maria  D.  Hosmer,  of  Concord,  Mass.,  and  two  sons, 
James  Hosmer,  Yale  ’84  and  Josiali  Harmar,  University  of 


38 


Pennsylvania,  ’90.  He  was  grandson  of  James  Lanman,  U.  S. 
Senator  from  Connecticut.  Traveled  a  year  after  graduation, 
was  then  instructor  in  history  and  in  the  classical  department 
of  the  Classical  Institution,  Alexandria,  Ya.  He  was  after¬ 
wards  connected  with  the  Astronomical  Observatory  at  Wash- 
ington,  in  charge  of  a  Bureau  in  the  Interior  Department  and 
latterly  engaged  in  collecting  claims  against  the  Government 
at  Philadelphia. 

Seymour,  Edward  Woodruff.  Born  Aug.  30,  1832, 
Litchfield,  Conn.  Died  at  his  home  in  Litchfield,  Sunday,  Oct. 
16,  1892,  set.  60  years  1  month  and  16  days  old,  of  acute 
cerebro-spinal  meningitis.  He  had  no  children.  His  wife,  the 
daughter  of  Frederick  Augustus  Tallmadge,  Recorder  of  Hew 
York,  and  granddaughter  of  Col.  Benjamin  Tallmadge,  the 
famous  Revolutionary  Cavalryman  who  had  Major  Andre  in 
charge,  survives  him. 

During  the  day  previous  to  his  death  Seymour  had  been 
indisposed,  but  no  grave  symptoms  appeared  until  Saturday 
evening  about  9  o’clock  when  waking  from  a  quiet  sleep  he 
became  instantly  delirious  and  in  a  few  hours,  passing  into  a 
comatose  condition,  died  without  a  word  or  struggle.  When 
he  was  buried  on  the  afternoon  of  a  sweet  October  day  (Wed¬ 
nesday,  Oct.  19)  a  long  line  of  mourners  followed  his  remains 
to  their  resting  place  in  the  town  where  he  was  born,  had  lived 
and  died,  and  whose  history  his  ancestors  had  so  nobly  illustra¬ 
ted.  Four  of  his  classmates  were  among  the  honorary  pall 
bearers,  Robinson,  Knevals,  Harland  and  Thomas  (C.  L.) 
He  died  60  years  1  month  and  16  days  old  when  he  had  been 
about  three  years  on  the  Bench  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  Errors 
of  Connecticut.  The  tributes  to  him  from  the  Bar,  the  Church 
whose  senior  vestryman  he  was,  from  friends  and  others  are 
too  numerous  to  be  reprinted  here.  I  name  as  two  of  the  best 
the  “  Obituary  Sketch  ”  prepared  for  the  62nd  volume  of  the 
Connecticut  Reports,  at  the  request  of  the  Reporter,  by  Robinson 
and  the  eloquent  address  before  the  Fairfield  County  Bar  by 
ex-State  Attorney  J.  H.  Olmstead  of  Stamford.  The  vital 
facts  of  his  biography  are  that  his  mother  was  sister  of  George 
C.  Woodruff,  Esq.,  a  strong  lawyer  in  that  town  of  strong  law- 


39 


yers.  He  was  the  oldest  son  of  Chief  Justice  Origin  S.  Sey¬ 
mour.  His  grandfather  was  a  staunch  Connecticut  farmer,  for 
many  years  Sheriff  of  Litchfield  County.  His  great  grand¬ 
father  was  Maj.  Morris  Seymour  of  Revolutionary  memory. 
Gov.  Horatio  Seymour  of  Hew  York  and  Judge  Horatio  Sey¬ 
mour  of  Middlebury,  Vt.,  belonged  to  the  same  family.  His 
first  public  service  was  as  Judge  of  Probate.  He  was  in  the 
Legislature  in  1859-60-70-71;  the  State  Senate  in  1876 ;  he 
represented  his  District  in  Congress  from  1882  to  1886;  and 
was  appointed  Judge  on  the  Supreme  Court  of  Errors  in  1889. 
In  addition  to  his  position  as  Senior  Warden  of  St.  Michael’s 
Church,  Litchfield,  he  had  been  one  of  the  representatives  of 
the  diocese  of  Connecticut  in  the  general  conventions  of  the 
Episcopal  Church.  As  a  lawyer  he  wras  thorough  in  the  pre¬ 
paration  of  his  cases  and  noted  for  skill  and  good  judgment  in 
the  examination  of  witnesses.  He  was  better  fitted  for  the 
Bench  than  the  Bar  and  was  in  the  very  position  for  which  he 
seemed  designed  and  at  a  time  when  to  all  appearances,  he  was 
most  needed  there,  when  he  died.  His  success  as  a  judge  was  the 
result  of  a  happy  combination  of  endowments  rather  than  a  spe¬ 
cial  development  of  learning  or  genius  in  one  direction  or  in  ex¬ 
traordinary  proportions.  He  was  hard  to  be  misled  on  the  law 
or  the  evidence,  and  brought  with  him  into  every  case  an  inflexi¬ 
ble  uprightness  and  a  strong  infusion  of  judicial  ethics.  With¬ 
out  any  nonsense  or  any  parade  he  sat  on  the  Bench  the  serene 
embodiment  of  the  will  of  the  law  that  righteousness  should  be 
done  among  men.  All  this  was  the  natural  outgrowth  of  the 
character  of  the  man  as  we  knew  him.  He  did  not  care  so 
much  for  books  or  the  drill  of  the  classroom,  as  he  did  for  the 
human  discipline  of  college  life.  In  this  he  was  quickly  and 
deeply  observant.  He  had  a  fine  large,  quick  and  steady  eye 
which  denoted  well  the  natural  shrewdness  of  his  mind.  He 
learned  later  in  'the  practice  of  his  profession  to  go  to  books 
for  what  he  needed  and  to  get  from  them  the  aid  he  wanted. 
He  possessed  qualities  that  silently  won  his  way  for  him  by 
their  own  genial  force,  and  at  the  same  time  left  him  free  to 
follow  his  convictions.  I  believe  that  the  root  and  basis  of  it 
all  was  ethical,  that  his  good  sense  was  not  so  much  intellec¬ 
tual  sharpness  as  genuine  sympathy  with  the  moral  order  of  a 


40 


righteous  world.  This  sentiment  deepened  with  him  as  life 
advanced  and  broadened.  His  Christian  convictions  took  firmer 
hold  on  him  and  his  faith  in  the  reality  and  efficiency  of  the 
Gospel  became  simpler  and  because  simpler  more  outspoken. 

Skelding,  Arthur  Eugene.  Born  April  12,  1832,  at 
Stamford,  Conn.  Hied  Hov.  23,  1888,  at  Riverside,  Conn., 
56  years,  7  months  and  11  days  old.  Skelding  had  been 
a  great  sufferer  from  sciatic  rheumatism.  By  medical  advice 
he  took  long  walks  daily  and  chose  for  the  purpose  the 
track  of  the  Hew  York  and  Hew  Haven  railway  where 
on  a  sharp  curve  between  Stamford  and  Riverside  he 
was  struck  and  killed  by  a  train  he  did  not  see.  He  and  his 
wife  were  engaged  in  building  up  and  developing  Riverside 
where  unfortunately  they  sank  most  of  their  property.  It 
might  have  been  better  had  he  kept  to  the  law  which  he  prac¬ 
ticed  for  a  time  in  Hew  York  after  graduation,  until  failing 
health  seemed  to  call  for  a  more  active  life.  His  widow  is  liv¬ 
ing  in  Chicago  (Essie  A.  Skelding,  559  Webster  ave.),  and  has 
two  children,  a  married  daughter  living  in  Wallingford,  Conn., 
and  a  son  Arthur  B.  Skelding,  graduated  Yale  Scientific,  *89, 
an  electrician  living  with  his  mother,  in  Chicago. 

Train,  Abner  Leavenworth.  Born  Sept.  16,  1830,  at 
Milford,  Conn.  Hied  at  his  home  in  Albany,  H.  Y.,  in 
the  service  of  the  State  as  Secretary  of  the  Forest  Commission, 
Feb.  10,  1891,  aged  60  years,  4  months  and  25  days.  His 
appointment  on  the  Hew  York  Forest  Commission  was  a  very 
great  satisfaction  to  him,  both  as  occupying  his  restless 
energies  and  as  bringing  with  it  a  very  convenient  addition  to 
the  modest  income  of  his  own  property. 

The  Hew  York  Forest  Commission  was  organized  in  1885, 
to  preserve  the  very  large  forest  domain  belonging  to  the  State, 
which  up  to  that  time  had  been  subjected  to  almost  unre¬ 
strained  depredations,  and  was  when  the  Act  creating  the  com¬ 
mission  vras  passed,  in  danger  of  entire  destruction.  Train 
was  the  first  Secretary  of  the  Commission,  and  continued  in  the 
position  until  the  time  of  his  death.  His  duties  which  were 
largely  of  an  executive  character,  were  arduous  and  admirably 


41 


performed.  He  framed  rules  and  regulations  for  the  preserva¬ 
tion  of  the  forests,  he  took  part  in  drafting  and  promoting  the 
passage  of  laws  which  vitally  affected  the  ob  jects  and  aims  of  the 
Commission,  and  he  prepared  annual  reports  to  the  Legislature 
which  show  evidences  of  research  and  skill  in  handling  topics 
relating  to  forestry.  His  labors  merit  the  greater  praise 
as  they  were  for  the  most  part  performed  while  he  was  tor¬ 
tured  with  rheumatic  gout  to  which  during  the  last  few  years 
of  his  life  he  was  a  martyr.  In  the  midst  of  constant  labor, 
of  frequent  annoyances,  interruptions  and  of  almost  ever  pre¬ 
sent  pain,  he  preserved  a  sweet  amiability  of  disposition  and 
an  evenness  of  temper  which  endeared  him  to  all  about  him. 
At  the  end,  he  passed  away  suddenly  and  without  apparent 
pain.  His  devotion  to  the  class  and  his  work  for  it  in  the 
class-book  of  1883  need  only  be  mentioned.  Previous  to  his 
appointment  on  the  Forest  Commission  he  had  spent  some  con¬ 
siderable  time  traveling  abroad.  There  remains  of  his  family 
only  one  daughter,  Mrs.  Annie  Leavenworth  Trumbull,  resid¬ 
ing  at  New  Haven. 

Watrous,  George  Henry.  Born  April  26,  1829,  at 
Bridgewater,  Pa.  Died  July  5,  1889,  at  his  home,  New 
Haven,  Conn.,  set.  60  yrs.,  2  months  and  9  days  old  after  a 
long  and  lingering  illness,  leaving  three  children  by  his  first 
wife,  Harriet  J.  Dutton  (daughter  of  the  late  Gov.  Henry  Dut¬ 
ton,  Kent  Professor  of  Law  at  Yale) ;  George  Dutton  W atrous, 
lawyer  and  professor  in  the  Yale  Law  School ;  Elizabeth  Eliot, 
wife  of  Edward  Y.  Baynolds,  lawyer,  and  lecturer  in  the  Yale 
Graduate  course,  New  Haven;  and  Charles  A.  Watrous,  Fi¬ 
nancial  Editor  of  the  New  Yorh  Sun.  By  his  2d  wife  Lily 
M.  Graves  wTho  is  still  living,  four  children  survive  him,  a 
daughter  Maud,  and  three  sons  Eliot,  Henry  Dutton,  and 
Francis  Melzar. 

At  the  time  of  his  appointment  as  President  of  the  Consoli¬ 
dated  Road  in  1879,  Watrous  was  by  common  consent  a  lead¬ 
ing  lawyer  at  the  New  Haven  Bar,  ranking  with  Charles  R. 
Ingersoll  and  John  S.  Beach,  had  represented  the  district  in 
the  legislature  and  been  corporation  counsel  to  the  city.  The 
new  office  involved,  more  than  he  expected  it  would,  the  sur¬ 
render  of  his  lucrative  and  honorable  practice.  It  had  already 


42 


been  declined  by  one  member  of  tbe  class  on  the  ground  that 
he  could  not  afford  to  sacrifice  his  professional  practice.  Some 
of  Watrous’  friends,  Billings  among  them,  advised  him  that 
the  sacrifice  would  prove  too  great  for  him  also,  that  he  should 
not  go  into  a  new  experiment  which  might  spoil  a  good  lawyer 
and  make  only  an  indifferent  railway  president.  He  continued 
to  do  some  business  as  a  lawyer,  but  the  Consolidated  Road 
was  an  effectual  check  on  any  higher  ascent  in  bis  profession. 
His  administration  was  honest  and  capable  and  as  progressive 
as  could  be  expected  of  a  president  who  had  not  been  specially 
trained  in  the  railway  service. 

Williamson,  William  Loao.  Born  Sept.  4,  1832,  in  Nant- 
meal  Township,  Chester  Co.,  Pa.  Died  May  8,  1885,  at 
Potsdam,  Pa.,  set.  52  yrs.  8  mos.  and  4  days.  He  was  junior 
partner  in  the  Banking  House  of  J.  W.  Casselberry  &  Co. 
After  having  enjoyed  unbroken  health  up  to  1884,  he  then 
broke  down  and  for  a  time  did  no  business.  His  health 
improved  greatly  but  failed  again  on  the  approach  of  win¬ 
ter  and  he  died  in  May.  He  never  recovered  from  the 
shock  occasioned  by  the  death  of  his  eldest  son,  a  young 
man  of  promise  hi  his  twenty-third  year,  who  died  in  the 
autumn  of  1883.  Mrs.  Williamson  lives  in  the  old  home. 
A  daughter,  Anna,  married  in  1889  J.  Whitcher  Thompson  of 
the  Philadelphia  bar.  A  son,  William  Loag,  is  engaged  in  the 
Baldwin  Locomotive  Works,  and  the  younger  son,  Percy,  fol¬ 
lowing  his  father’s  example,  is  in  the  National  Bank  at  Potts- 
dam. 


DETAILS  AND  SUMMARIES 


OF  THE  CLASS  HISTORY. 


CLASS  AGES. 

The  average  class-age  at  graduation  was  very  nearly  twenty- 
two  years,  two  months  and  ten  days. 

Four  of  the  Class  only  were  born  in  1834  : 


Greene, 

Bacon, 

Lewis, 

Baer, 


Nov.  27,  1834. 
May  6,  “ 

Feb.  25,  “ 

Jan.  9,  “ 


These  four  were  our  youngest  men  and  were  graduated 
respectively  set.  18  yrs.  8  mos. ;  19  yrs.  2  mos. ;  19  yrs.  5  mos., 
and  19  yrs.  6  mos. 

The  oldest  man  in  the  Class  was  Austin  Hart,  born  April 
17,  1824,  set.  29  yrs.  3  mos. 

The  next  in  age  down  to  the  valedictorian  were  : 


Douglass, 

• 

• 

28  yrs.  7  mos. 

Dowd, 

CO 

00 

OJ 

Aiken, 

28  “ 

Harding, 

26  “  8  “ 

Stowell, 

26  “  6  “ 

Clark, 

26  “  3  “ 

Hogan,  . 

24  “  8  “ 

Classified  by  ages  the  Class  stood : 

Twenty-nine  years  or  a  fraction  over, 
Twenty-eight  “  “  “ 

Twenty -seven  “  “  “ 

Twenty-six  “  “  “ 

Twenty-five  “  “  “ 

Twenty-four  “  “  “ 

Twenty-three  “  “  “ 

Twenty -two  “  “  “ 

Twenty-one  “  “  “ 

Twenty  “  “  “ 

Nineteen  “  but  not  twenty 

Eighteen  “  “  nineteen 


2 

2 

2 

2 

8 

15 

15 

36 

20 

3 

1 


108 


44 


These  figures  throw  no  light  on  the  vexed  question  as  to  the 
best  age  of  entering  college.  The  four  youngest  men  who  were 
matriculated  between  the  ages  of  14  and  15  have  among  them 
the  brilliant  names  of  Lewis  and  Bacon.  As  to  the  thirty- 
three  older  men  graduated  above  the  average  age  the  valedic¬ 
torian  Hogan  was  among  them.  So  was  the  brilliant  Aiken, 
and  many  others  of  our  most  successful  men.  The  inspection 
of  the  list  shows  that  while  these  older  men  have  held  their 
own  well  in  comparison  with  the  younger  men  in  the  competi¬ 
tion  of  life  there  is  nothing  to  be  gleaned  from  it  to  show  that 
an  early  matriculation  is  any  special  advantage  nor  that  a  later 
matriculation  is  any  perceptible  disadvantage. 

As  to  college  reputations  a  few  men  have  gone  far  beyond 
what  was  expected  of  them  at  graduation.  A  smaller  number 
have  fallen  behind.  On  the  whole  the  test  of  forty  years  has 
brought  the  class  out  wonderfully  near  to  what  the  indications 
were  when  we  were  graduated.  For  this  one  class  at  least  the 
time  for  the  breaking  up  and  reconstruction  of  reputations  was 
the  first  two  or  three  years  of  our  life  together  in  college. 

MARRIAGE  AND  FAMILY. 

The  class  has  taken  to  married  life  with  a  great  and  virtuous 
majority.  So  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  ascertain  ninety-one 
men  in  all  have  been  married  and  had  among  them  ninety-nine 
wives,  of  whom  twenty  have  died. 

Douglass  was  trying  on  his  new  dickey  for  his  second  mar¬ 
riage  when  the  class  were  marching  in  to  supper  at  Savin  Rock 
in  1888.  The  result  of  all  this  marrying  has  been  as  nearly  as 
I  have  learned  305  children  with  a  goodly  company  of  grand¬ 
children  rising  up  behind.  Forty-nine  are  reported  as  having 
died,  leaving  two  hundred  and  fifty-six  as  the  present  enumer¬ 
ation  of  the  class  of  the  future.  The  number  of  those  who 
have  come  to  Yale  or  are  understood  to  be  intending  to  do  so 
is  only  thirty-six.  McCormick  is  the  banner  man,  having  grad¬ 
uated  four  of  his  sons  here.  It  is  melancholy  to  reflect  that  we 
still  have  seven  bachelors  living,  confirmed  and  impenitent, 
Babcock,  Baldwin,  Catlin,  L.  A.,  Harland,  Hinman,  Warren, 
Young.  Ten  died  unmarried,  Anderson,  Baer,  Bradley,  Good¬ 
rich,  Grout,  Hogan,  Nicholas,  Walden,  Webb,  Whittlesey. 


45 


GEOGRAPHICAL  DISTRIBUTION. 

In  the  matter  of  geographical  distribution  I  find  that  since 
graduation  39  of  our  men  have  been  working  for  considerable 
periods  in  New  England;  in  New  York  and  New  Jersey  32; 
in  the  South  14 ;  in  Pennsylvania  9  ;  in  California  and  on  the 
Pacific  coast  4 ;  in  the  central  west  including  Ohio  14 ;  in 
Montana  1 ;  abroad  8,  Arms,  Bingham  and  Harding  in  the 
Foreign  Miss,  service  of  the  A.  B.  C.  F.  M.,  Hough,  Minister 
of  the  American  Chapel  at  Paris  ;  Smalley,  Tribune  correspon¬ 
dent  at  London,  Heard,  merchant  in  China  and  Russian  Consul 
General  at  Shanghai,  McVeagh,  U.  S.  Minister  at  Constantino¬ 
ple,  under  a  Republican  administration,  and  now,  under  a  Dem¬ 
ocratic  administration,  U.  S.  Ambassador  to  Italy ;  White,  U.  S. 
Minister  at  Berlin  and  again  at  St.  Petersburg,  appointed  by 
a  Republican  and  continued  in  office  by  a  Democratic  adminis¬ 
tration. 


OCCUPATIONS. 

LAW. 

Surveying  the  class  history  by  the  work  and  occupation  of  its 
members  I  find  that  much  the  greater  number  have  devoted 
themselves  to  the  study  or  practice  of  the  law  or  to  both. 
Of  the  members  of  the  class  living  and  dead,  fifty-one  or 
nearly  one-half  have  at  some  period  taken  up  this  profession. 
Those  who  have  done  so  are  Anderson,  Bacon,  Baer,  Bald¬ 
win,  Bennet,  Billings,  Bishop,  Bradley,  Bradstreet,  Bromley, 
Brooks  (D.  W.),  Burr,  Douglass,  Dulles,  Gibson,  Gillespie, 
Greene,  Grout,  Hall,  Hart  (Austin),  ILarland,  Hedges,  Hin- 
man,  Jack,  Johnson  (Geo.  A.),  Johnston  (Stoddard),  Jones, 
Kline,  Knevals,  Lewis,  McCormick,  MacVeagh,  Nicholas, 
Olds,  Phelps,  Post,  Robinson,  Seymour,  Shiras,  Smalley, 
Spooner,  Thomas  (C.  L.),  Thomas  (John  G.),  Train,  Waite, 
Walden,  Watrous,  Webb,  Welch,  White,  Woodward. 

This  is  a  remarkable  roll,  both  for  the  distinguished  names 
on  it  and  for  the  story  it  tells  of  our  American  versatility. 
Some  have  come  into  the  legal  profession  after  having  made 
their  start  in  another.  A  considerable  number  among  them 
have  either  never  practiced  law  at  all,  or  dropped  out  of  the 


46 


profession  early,  or  achieved  success  on  other  lines  and  will  be 
named  again  in  other  parts  of  this  report  under  other  classifica¬ 
tions.  A  few  in  the  list  while  remaining  lawyers  and  standing 
faithfully  by  their  chosen  profession  have  enlarged  their 
influence  and  added  to  their  honors  by  extra-professional  enter¬ 
prise,  as  for  example,  Gibson,  Gillespie,  Harland,  Lewis, 
MacVeagh  and  Watrous. 

There  remain  on  the  list  the  names  of  at  least  seventeen  men 
who  have  achieved  a  first-rate  reputation  in  the  practice  of  the 
law.  Bradley  was  showing  unexpected  ability  when  he  died. 
Grout  was  not  disappointing  his  friends,  Phelps  has  been  in 
his  premature  grave  nearly  fifteen  years,  but  the  laurels  he 
won  in  strictly  professional  practice  at  the  bar  of  New  York 
are  not  faded.  Billings  presided  over  the  U.  S.  District  Court 
at  New  Orleans  until  his  death,  with  honor  and  distinguished 
ability.  Olds  has  been  on  the  bench.  Jack  had  a  first-rate 
reputation  when  he  died  in  Texas.  George  A.  Johnson  is  ex 
Attorney-General  of  California.  Lewis  amid  his  universal 
activities  as  a  scholar,  historian,  economist  and  authority  in 
matters  of  prison  reform,  has  found  time  to  distinguish  himself 
in  certain  expert  departments  of  law.  Shiras,  after  steering  the 
Pennsylvania  railroad  for  half  a  generation,  is  now  on  the  bench 
of  the  Supreme  Court  at  Washington.  Bacon  was  the  nomina¬ 
tion  of  the  Bar  of  Central  New  York  for  a  more  recent  vacancv 

« / 

in  the  same  august  tribunal.  Seymour,  lawyer  of  lawyer  born, 
rose  to  his  place  in  the  Supreme  Court  of  Errors.  Robinson’s 
professional  practice  was  so  large  and  important  that  he  could 
not  afford  to  drop  it  for  the  Presidency  of  the  New  York,  New 
Haven  and  Hartford  Railway.  Watrous  was  a  first-rate  law¬ 
yer  when  the  burdens  of  that  responsible  office  fell  on  him. 
Bacon,  Knevals,  MacYeagh,  are  strong  names  at  the  Ameri¬ 
can  bar,  while  Brooks,  Bradstreet,  Burr,  Waite  and  Welch 
have  all  achieved  a  distinct  success.  Hedges  and  Lewis  as  law¬ 
yers  defy  classification,  one  the  flower  of  our  many-sided  mod¬ 
ern  life  in  its  highest  relations  of  letters,  learning,  professional 
occupation  and  economical  and  institutional  reform ;  the  other 
the  staunch,  well-equipped  and  versatile  Puritan  pioneer,  found 
ing  states  and  doing  the  work  which  in  our  generation  has  been 
nowhere  else  so  nobly  inviting  or  rewarding  as  in  the  new  states 


47 


of  the  American  West.  The  phenomenal  point  in  the  list  is  that 
it  has  on  it  the  name  of  one  man  a  United  States  Minister  under 
a  republican  administration  and  now  again  to  another  court 
under  a  Democratic,  of  another  once  United  States  Minister 
by  Republican  appointment  to  Germany  at  Berlin  and  now 
again  by  Republican  appointment  and  Democratic  approbation 
United  States  Minister  to  Russia,  of  a  third,  Justice  of  the 
United  States  Supreme  Court,  of  a  fourth,  on  the  Supreme 
Bench  of  Connecticut,  and  of  a  United  States  Attorney-Gen¬ 
eral. 


THEOLOGY. 

The  choice  of  the  second  largest  number  of  the  class  was  the 
Christian  Ministry.  Twenty-three  of  our  men  have  worked 
more  or  less  steadily  in  this  sacred  calling  :  Aiken,  Arms,  Bart¬ 
lett,  Bingham,  Brooks  (Charles),  Capron,  Clark  (Edson  Lyman), 
Cobb,  Coit,  Davies,  Dowd,  Gilbert,  Gleason,  Harding,  Holmes, 
Hough,  Lewis,  McCulley,  McFarland,  Stowell,  Twining, 
Whiton,  Willard. 

Of  these  twenty-three,  two  went  into  the  ministry  of  the 
Methodist  church,  Lewis  and  Gilbert ;  two  into  the  Presbyte¬ 
rian,  Bartlett  and  Dowd ;  two  into  the  Dutch  Reformed,  Cobb 
and  Gleason ;  and  one,  Davies,  into  the  Episcopal ;  sixteen 
have  been  Congregational  ministers,  three  of  them  in  the 
Foreign  Mission  work  under  the  American  Board,  and  thirteen 
at  home  in  the  pastoral  work  in  the  Congregational  churches. 
This  enumeration  shows  how  strong  the  Hew  England  influ¬ 
ence  was  in  our  day.  It  shows  also  how  preponderating  the 
religious  influences  were  at  Yale.  The  number  of  those  who 
did  not  feel  them  more  or  less  steadily  during  their  college 
course  was  exceedingly  small. 

Of  the  men  licensed  to  preach,  Dowd  has  only  exercised  his 
functions  within  the  limits  of  his  boarding  school  for  young 
ladies  at  Saratoga,  and  Willard  has  now  devoted  himself  to 
medicine.  As  to  Lewis,  about  the  only  professional  function  he 
does  not  stand  ready  to  perform  for  society  at  this  time,  is  that 
of  a  Methodist  minister.  Of  academic  honors  Whiton  holds 
Ph.D.  from  Yale  and  Lewis  from  the  University  of  Hew  York. 

The  degree  of  Sacrse  Theologise  Doctor  has  been  awarded  by 

4 


48 


Central  University  of  Kentucky  to  Bartlett,  by  Tale  to  Bing¬ 
ham,  Davies,  Twining,  by  the  University  of  Pennsylvania  to 
Davies,  who  also  holds  that  of  LL.D.  from  Hobart  College, 
by  Rutgers  College  to  Gleason,  and  by  the  College  of  Iowa  to 
Hough;  Twining  has  received  also  the  degree  of  L.H.D.  from 
Hamilton.  Arms  returned  from  the  mission  field  to  a  good 
pastoral  work  at  home,  and  is  now  reposing  on  his  laurels 
and  awaiting  a  new  call.  Bingham  has  been  pushing  his 
fathers  work  into  the  remoter  islands  of  the  Sea.  His  great 
achievement  and  probably  the  greatest  of  any  of  our  class, 
has  been  the  translation  of  the  Scriptures  into  the  lan¬ 
guage  of  the  Gilbert  Islands ;  Davies  is  the  Protestant  Episco¬ 
pal  Bishop  of  Michigan  ;  Mr.  Secretary  Clark  reports  that 
Harding  is  faithfully  upholding  the  standard  of  our  Divine 
Master  in  India.  As  for  the  others  in  the  ministerial  list 

thev  have  stood  well  with  their  brethren  and  done  their  work 
«/ 

as  they  could  where  they  were  called  to  serve,  not  all  of  them 

perhaps  with  the  sweet  content  of  our  dear  “  Brother  Gilbert, “ 

who  from  his  obscure  little  parish  writes  with  the  dignity  and 

self-respect  of  an  apostle,  “  my  parish  is  not  a  very  large  one 

but  I  suppose  I  can  be  as  useful  here  as  anywhere.*'  Gleason 

was  at  one  time  disturbed  bv  Minton's  latitudinarian  excur- 

«/ 

sions,  and  Davies,  when  Presbyter,  used  to  worry  more  than  he 
now  does  as  Bishop,  that  his  clerical  classmates  did  not  take  to 
the  true  succession.  But  so  far  as  I  know  thev  are  all  on  the 

V 

straight  path,  and  whatever  Mbit  on's  tendencies  may  have  been 

to  wabble  into  heresv,  there  is  every  reason  to  believe  that 

whether  he  has  or  has  not  shortened  bv  an  hour  the  duration 

«/ 

of  the  retribution  to  come,  he  has  not  embittered  the  future  of 
his  classmates  by  adding  a  single  minute  to  it. 


TEACHING. 

Thirteen  of  the  class  have  been  engaged  in  teaching : 
Whiton,  TThite,  Tarbox,  Bunn,  Post,  Lewis,  Dowd,  Goodrich, 
Capron,  Hart  (Augustine),  Hogan,  Spooner,  and  Smith,  who 
for  many  years  taught  music  with  success  at  New  Haven. 
Among  these  none  won  for  himself  the  praise  of  a  full,  faith¬ 
ful  and  beautiful  life  more  noblv  than  our  dear  and  never  for- 


49 


gotten  Capron,  the  St.  John  of  the  class,  beloved  from  the 
day  he  set  foot  on  the  campus.  Tarbox  died  in  his  work  at 
Nashville.  Whiton  gave  the  ancient  but  run-down  Hopkins 
Grammar  School  at  New  Haven  its  first  lift-up.  He  was  for 
a  time  head  of  the  Williston  Seminary  at  Easthampton,  Mass., 
later  an  efficient  teacher  in  the  famous  Brearley  School,  New 
York  City.  For  several  years  he  has  been  engaged  with  his 
eldest  daughter  in  raising  the  efficiency  and  reputation  of  her 
school  in  New  York,  to  an  unexampled  height.  Dowd  has  done 
good  work  in  the  same  way,  and  it  is  understood  thriven  in  his 
work.  White’s  name  will  go  down  to  posterity  as  that  of  the 
founder  of  Cornell.  Lewis,  when  but  a  few  years  out  of  col¬ 
lege  distinguished  himself  as  Professor  of  Languages  in  the 
Normal  University  of  Illinois  at  Bloomington;  later,  in  the 
chair  of  Mathematics  at  the  Troy  University,  where  he  after¬ 
wards  took  charge  of  the  Greek,  and  in  due  time  became 
acting  President. 

JOURNALISM. 

In  Journalism  twelve  of  our  men  have  engaged  more  or  less 
permanently.  Bromley,  Greene,  Johnston,  Lewis,  Goddard, 
Smalley,  Train,  Twining,  Stedman,  Williamson. 

In  his  remarks  at  the  class-meeting  in  1873,  Goddard  gave 
the  palm  of  achievement  in  this  line  of  work  to  Smalley,  as 
army  reporter  and  London  correspondent  of  the  New  York 
Tribune.  Without  abating  anything  from  this  praise  of 
Smalley,  who  happily  is  living  and  speaks  for  himself,  we  may 
feel  compelled  to  give  the  first  place  to  the  incomparable 
Goddard.  He  found  the  Boston  Advertiser  in  the  front  rank 
of  independent  journalism.  He  held  it  there  and  raised  it 
higher.  He  gave  new  finish  to  its  edge,  new  breadth  and 
freedom  to  its  work,  and  above  all  an  intelligent  significance, 
a  moral  force  and  independent  courage  to  its  utterances  which 
placed  it  at  the  head  of  New  England  journalism  and  perhaps 
made  it  the  ideal  American  journal — a  dignity  promptly  abdi¬ 
cated  when  he  died. 

Goddard  was  a  modest  man,  but  not  so  modest  as  to  empty 
of  all  meaning  his  remark  that  the  Worcester  Spy  after  he 
left  it  and  in  the  hands  of  his  successor  Greene  was  better 
than  when  he  had  it. 


50 


The  citizens  of  Hew  Haven  remember  with  regret  what  the 
Palladium  was  when  Train  was  on  it ;  and  as  to  Bromley, 
inventor  of  the  proud  designation  of  the  Mugwumps,  what 
would  the  history  of  the  New  York  Tribune  be  with  the 
thread  he  has  woven  into  it  torn  out  ?  How  exclusively  Stod¬ 
dard  Johnston  has  devoted  himself  to  journalism,  I  do  not 
know.  I  have  already  said  so  much  of  Lewis  and  his  infinite 
varieties  that  I  would  not  recall  here  that  he  was  once  editor 
of  the  Kew  York  Evening  Post ,  were  it  not  that  among  his 
recent  activities  he  has  resumed  some  part  of  the  functions  of 
an  editor  in  connection  with  Harper's  Weeldy.  In  a  notice 
I  once  wrote  of  a  manual  for  the  young  by  the  Bev.  Dr. 
Buckley,  I  having  remarked  that  so  far  as  I  could  observe 
the  author  had  touched  on  every  subject  in  this  manual  except 
the  art  of  plumbing,  the  reverend  author  issued  a  new  edi¬ 
tion  with  a  chapter  on  plumbing  included.  I  forbear  to 
notice  on  this  occasion  what  trades  Lewis  has  not  mastered 
lest  he  should  promptly  acquire  them  and  force  me  to  a  new 
report. 

As  for  myself  one  of  my  friends  who  had  won  some  celeb¬ 
rity  with  his  pen  comforted  me  in  the  obscurity  of  my  work 
with  the  remark  that  an  editors  function  was  the  maximum 
of  influence  combined  with  the  minimum  of  recognition.  I 
will  add  nothing  to  break  the  silence  of  this  beautiful  mini¬ 
mum. 


BUSINESS  AND  BANKING. 

The  number  of  our  men  who  have  engaged  in  business  is 
eighteen  or  nineteen.  According  to  my  classification  ten  have 
been  for  the  most  part  merchants.  Babcock,  Catlin  (Julius), 
Fellowes  (now  out  of  business  and  occupied  as  an  artist), 
Hoyt,  Kent,  Bond,  Warren,  Thomas  (Charles  Lloyd),  Heard 
and  Blachly  who  for  his  brief  life  chose  this  occupation. 

First  in  this  list,  for  his  munificence  to  the  Alma  Mater  is 
Kent  whose  monument  stands  on  the  college  grounds.  It  is 
also  his  praise  that  by  his  patriotic  honorableness  in  the  dark 
days  of  the  War  he  broke  down  monopoly  in  the  commissariat 
of  the  army  and  enabled  the  government  to  feed  the  troops 
at  fair  prices.  Heard,  though  the  changes  of  the  same  War 


51 


and  of  trade  in  China,  pulled  him  down,  retired  with  a  name 
brightened  by  calamity  from  the  most  princely  house  in  the 
China  trade.  The  name  and  hand  of  Julius  Catlin  and  his 
noble  wife  are  in  every  generous  and  charitable  work  in  New 
York.  Bond,  banker  and  merchant  has  done  his  work  well. 
Charley  Thomas,  the  bright  spot  in  my  memories  of  Provi¬ 
dence,  is  always  the  young  eagle  of  the  class  with  his  eye  on 
the  sun. 

In  the  more  strictly  financial  departments  of  business,  we 
have  had,  Williamson  who  varied  his  routine  with  journalism 
and  teaching ;  Townsend,  successful  in  the  management  of 
funds,  from  the  day  of  his  conversion  in  college  a  faithful 
Christain  and  afterwards  a  Presbyterian  elder ;  Stedman 
known  the  world  over  as  the  Banker-poet ;  Tobey  a  broker  in 
New  York;  Palfrey  a  broker  in  New  Orleans;  McCormick, 
busy  with  financial  responsibility,  but  more  busy  as  a  layman 
working  for  the  spiritual  good  of  his  fellow  men ;  Dulles,  in 
the  insurance  business  at  Philadelphia;  Lynde  Alexander 
Catlin,  until  within  a  few  years  the  general  Treasurer  of  the 
Illinois  Central  railroad;  Brewster  respected  and  successful 
in  the  financial  direction  of  more  than  one  large  concern. 
Here  too  should  be  mentioned  the  administration  of  the  roads 
consolidated  in  the  New  York,  New  Haven  &  Hartford  rail¬ 
way  company  under  the  presidency  of  Watrous. 

MEDICINE. 

When  we  were  graduated  the  medical  profession  had  not  yet 
received  the  impulse  which  has  since  sent  it  so  remarkably  to 
the  front.  Nevertheless  eight  of  our  men  chose  medicine  for 
their  career.  French  first  made  a  digression  into  the  mercan¬ 
tile  by-paths  of  the  profession,  and  later  yet  went  into  the 
business  of  a  nursery  gardener.  Goodrich,  though  medicine 
was  his  choice,  died  before  he  was  embarked  in  the  practice. 
Willard  began  in  the  Congregational  ministry,  but  after  a  use¬ 
ful  pastorate  at  Upton,  Mass.,  finding  his  path  broken  up  in  that 
direction,  promptly  studied  for  a  degree  in  medicine  and  is 
now  the  proprietor  and  director  of  a  hospital  for  nervous 
patients  at  Burlington,  Vt.  The  honor  roll  of  our  medical 
men  begins  with  Denniston,  who  in  the  service  of  his  country 


52 


offered  liimself  to  the  death-dealing  darts  of  Apollo  as  boldly 
as  soldiers  to  the  chance  of  battle.  JBissell  has  a  first  rate 
practice  at  Lakeville,  Conn.  The  same  was  true  of  Lord  at 
Kansas  City,  and  Dr.  Hudson  might  have  had  all  Hartford  in 
his  ride  had  it  not  been  for  the  Connecticut  Fish  Commission 
and  the  Auditorship  of  the  Hew  York  and  Hew  Haven  Kail- 
road.  Stearns  has  made  himself  a  national  reputation.  Few 
medical  men  have  such  a  record  behind  them,  or  are  known  so 
widely  at  home  and  abroad.  His  service  during  the  war,  in 
the  field  and  in  the  medical  direction  of  a  large  military  de¬ 
partment,  his  standing  as  a  general  practitioner,  a  medical  lec¬ 
turer  and  author,  and  his  administration  of  the  Butler  Asylum 
at  Hartford  have  placed  him  among  the  recognized  expert 
authorities  in  his  own  special  department. 


ENGINEERS,  ARCHITECTS,  ARTISTS  AND  FARMERS. 

Of  civil  engineers  and  architects  we  have  had  two,  Weston 
and  Bliss.  Bond  was  also  at  one  time  engaged  in  civil-engin¬ 
eering.  Of  farmers  and  planters  we  have  had  five,  Gillespie, 
Kline,  Skelding,  John  G.  Thomas  and  Young.  For  the  last 
ten  years  Lynde  Alexander  Catlin  must  be  added  to  this  list. 

In  the  world  of  art  Smith  was  the  greater  part  of  his  life 
a  musician  as  Stedman  has  always  been  a  poet.  In  the  confine¬ 
ments  and  limitations  of  his  invalid  life  at  his  home  in  Hew 
Haven,  Fellowes  has  taken  to  the  pencil  and  the  brush,  and 
found  recreation  and  solace  in  art. 


THE  CLASS  IH  THE  WAR 

Beyond  these  classifications  by  professions  and  occupations, 
there  are  several  other  aspects  of  our  class  life  and  activity  to 
be  looked  at ;  first,  there  is  the  part  taken  by  our  men  in  the 
Civil  War.  Twenty-eight  were  engaged  in  one  way  or  another 
on  both  sides.  I  give  the  roll,  assigning  to  each  as  a  rule,  the 
highest  rank  he  reached. 

Bacon,  Capt.  7tli  Conn.;  Baer,  Capt.  122nd  Pa.;  Bald¬ 
win,  15th  Mass.,  wounded,  and  Adj.-Gen.  Yols. ;  Bartlett, 
Confederate  Chaplain,  1st  Alabama ;  Bishop,  Chief  of  Cav.  and 


53 


Adj.-Gen.  Arkansas  Yols.  with  rank  of  Brig.-Gen. ;  Bromley, 
Capt.  18th  Conn,  and  Provost  Marshal ;  Burr,  Ad  j. -Gen.  94tli 
Illinois  Yols.;  Denniston,  Surgeon,  died  in  the  service;  Gib¬ 
son,  enlisted  in  Confederate  service  Capt.  of  Artillery,  in  ’64 
Maj.-Gen.  Commanding  Division ;  Greene,  Capt.  15tli  Mass., 
Prisoner  at  Ball’s  Bluff.  Sent  to  Richmond.  Supposed  to  be 
dead.  So  far  as  I  know  he  is  the  only  member  of  our  class 
now  living  whose  funeral  sermon  has  been  preached ;  Har- 
land  I  saw  march  off  gallantly  at  the  first  call  to  the  war, 
down  Church  street,  at  Re w  Haven,  in  April,  1861,  Capt. 
3d  Conn.  He  was  commissioned  Brig-Gen.  Nov.,  ’62,  and 
served  gallantly  to  the  end  of  the  war ;  Holmes,  enlisted  as 
private  21st  Conn.,  commissioned  Chaplain  1st  Conn.  Cavalry, 
badly  wounded  at  Ashland,  Ya.,  June  1,  ’64;  Houoh,  served 
in  the  U.  S.  Christian  Commission;  Hudson,  Asst.  U.  S.  Sur¬ 
geon;  Jack,  enlisted  as  a  private  in  the  Confederate  Terry 
Rangers  of  Texas,  was  aid  to  Gen.  Albert  Sidney  Johnston 
when  he  fell,  also  to  Gen.  Leonidas  Polk,  by  whose  side  he 
stood  when  he  received  his  fatal  shot  at  Pine  Mountain.  His 
rank  was  Lieut. -Col.  A.  A.  G. ;  Johnston,  on  Gen.  Bragg’s  staff 
and  Gen.  Breckenridge’s,  with  rank  of  Colonel ;  Jones,  in 
Provost  Marshal’s  department,  Minnesota;  Lord  served  as  IT. 
S.  Surgeon,  MacYeagh,  Capt.  Mounted  Militia,  Penn.,  and  aid 
on  Gen.  Couch’s  staff;  Nicholas,  Major  4th  Federal  Cavalry, 
Kentucky.  For  good  service  in  the  field  at  Chicamaugua  he 
was  offered  the  command  of  a  Brig.-Gen.,  hut  declined  with 
characteristic  modesty.  Died  of  disease  contracted  in  the  ser¬ 
vice  ;  Smalley,  boldest,  coolest,  and  best  of  army  correspond¬ 
ents  in  the  field;  Spooner,  Major  46th  Mass.  Yols.;  Stearns, 
U.  S.  Surgeon,  with  rank  of  Brev.  Lieut.-Col.,  successively 
Med.  Director  of  the  Dep’t  of  the  West,  of  the  right  wing  of  the 
Army  of  the  Tenn.  and  of  general  hospitals  of  the  northern 
army  of  the  Mississippi ;  Thomas  (John  G.),  Confederate  Ass’t 
Inspector  of  Cavalry,  rank  of  Major;  Waite,  Capt.  130th  Ohio 
Yols.;  Webb,  private  in  Morgan’s  Confederate  Cavalry,  died 
of  wounds  received  at  Glasgow,  Ky. ;  Whittlesey,  enlisted 
Lieut.  1st  Conn.  Artillery,  rose  to  Brig.-Gen.  by  brevet,  at  the 
close  of  the  war  commissioned  Capt.  in  the  regular  service ; 
Young,  in  the  Confederate  service,  in  J.  B.  Stuart’s  cavalry, 


54 


prisoner  at  Vicksburg.  These  twenty-eight  were  divided  be¬ 
tween  the  two  parties  to  the  war  in  the  proportion  of  twenty- 
one  in  the  Federal  ranks  and  seven  in  the  Confederate.  This 
means,  however,  in  this  case  that  every  Southern  man  in  the 
class  excepting  Nicholas,  wdio  remained  loyal,  took  up  arms  on 
the  Confederate  side,  while  less  than  one  in  four  of  the  North¬ 
ern  men  saw  actual  service  with  the  Federal  army.  One  of 
them  was  enlisted  on  the  Confederate  side. 

PUBLIC  AND  POLITICAL  LIFE. 

As  to  that  hazy,  indefinite  but  impressive  field  called  public 
life,  to  which  the  natural  American  turns  with  irrepressible 
ambition,  our  class  has  rushed  in  like  the  rest,  and  with  the 
rest  had  their  share  of  disappointments  and  satisfactions.  In 
the  higher  positions  of  state,  two  of  our  men  have  been 
United  States  Ministers  abroad  under  Republican  Presidents 
and  are  now  again  under  the  Democratic  Cleveland.  We  have 
had  a  Senator  and  a  Representative  in  Congress  and  an  Attor¬ 
ney-Gen.  of  the  U.  S.  We  have  one  of  the  Justices  of  the 
U.  S.  Supreme  Court  and  came  near  having  another.  One  of 
our  men  died  Judge  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  Errors  of  Con¬ 
necticut.  I  will  not  add  to  the  embarrassments  of  the  well 
known  gentlemen  who  without  success,  at  various  times  and  in 
various  parts  of  the  country,  have  tried  their  hands  in  the 
political  game,  by  parading  their  names  or  fixing  the  current 
market  rate  on  the  prizes  they  have  won.  Much  of  this  is 
exhibited  in  the  Class-book  of  1883.  So  far  as  I  am  able  to 
learn  about  twenty-five  of  our  men  would  figure  in  such  a  list 
were  it  made  out. 

In  such  a  matter  as  this  those  who  failed  in  the  battle  will 
often  count  for  more  than  those  who  won.  Certainly  in  esti¬ 
mating  the  work  of  our  college  class  we  cannot  omit  what  was 
thus  bravely  attempted.  I  do  not  suppose  that  Bacon  was 
happy  when  he  was  beaten  for  Congress  at  Rochester,  nor 
Hedges  in  Montana,  nor  Bishop  in  his  fight  for  the  governor¬ 
ship  of  Arkansas,  nor  Gillespie  in  his  for  the  Lieutenant-Gov¬ 
ernorship  in  Louisiana,  nor  Robinson  in  his  for  the  place  to 
which  he  was  again  nominated  by  acclamation  in  Connecticut, 


55 


nor  MacYeagh  when  he  had  to  take  himself  out  of  the  Attor¬ 
ney-General’s  chair  at  "Washington.  But  the  battles  they 
made  were  strong  and  noble.  W e  remember  them  with  pride. 
Some  of  them  are  chapters  in  the  political  history  of  the 
country  and  will  stand  there  to  show  what  one  college  class 
could  do. 

In  speaking  of  public  distinctions  which  were  won  or  tried  for, 
two  occur  to  me  which  were  at  least  curious  and  rare  enough 
in  this  country  to  he  mentioned,  one  pertaining  to  White  who 
is  Grand  Commander  or  some  such  dignitary  in  the  French 
Legion  of  Honor,  and  the  other  to  Heard  who  was  certainly 
the  only  man  among  us  entitled  to  wear  the  Russian  orders  of 
a  Knight  of  St.  Ann,  and  a  Commander  of  St.  Stanislas. 

THE  CLASS  IN  LITERATURE. 

Whatever  else  we  are  or  are  not  we  are  literary  men  and  what 
has  been  done  by  the  class  in  a  literary  way  cannot  he  omitted 
in  this  review. 

I  have  found  it,  however,  difficult  to  bring  this  part  of  my 
task  into  satisfactory  form.  Many  of  our  strong  writers  have 
hidden  their  best  work  in  journals  and  other  ephemeral  publi¬ 
cations.  No  one  can  say  how  much  good  work  by  Bromley, 
Train,  Williamson,  Goddard,  Smalley,  Stedman,  Lewis,  Greene 
and  others  is  concealed  in  that  complex  mass  of  journalistic 
force  which  urges  society  on  toward  higher  ends.  For 
example,  how  many  even  of  our  own  men  have  seen  Bromley’s 
“  Evolution  a  Failure  ”  in  the  New  York  Tribune  of  April  14, 
1894  ?  Several  of  our  class  have  issued  valuable  minor  publi¬ 
cations,  reviews,  essays,  addresses,  sermons,  memoirs  and  mon¬ 
ographs  such  as  Cobh’s  memorial  of  his  old  Dutch  Church  at 
Flushing.  Bacon  has  shown  in  such  occasional  papers  that  the 
old  fire  is  still  in  him.  Robinson  has  now  and  then  turned 
aside  from  the  law,  to  print  a  brilliant  paper  or  to  delight  an 
audience,  as  in  his  oration  on  the  completion  of  the  General 
Putnam  monument. 

Among  our  book-makers  in  the  department  of  belles  lettres , 
Stedman  stands  first  and  alone.  The  Class-book  of  1883  con¬ 
tains  the  catalogue  of  his  publications  up  to  that  time.  In  the 


56 


ten  years  which  have  passed  since  he  has  added  to  his  poems 
and  his  prose.  He  has  published  The  Poets  of  America,  a 
new  edition  of  the  Victorian  Poets,  revised  and  extended  to 
date,  and  taken  the  laboring  oar  in  the  great  and  standard 
Library  of  American  Literature  in  ten  volumes,  octavo. 

In  the  line  of  accurate  and  learned  scholarship  Lewis  has 
made  for  himself  a  reputation  by  what  he  has  published  dur¬ 
ing  these  ten  years  which  will  be  more  permanent  than  that 
based  on  his  translation  of  Bengel's  Gnomon,  his  History  of 
Germany,  or  his  work  on  Harper’s  large  Latin  Dictionary, 
done  in  connection  with  the  late  Professor  Short.  In  his 
Latin  Dictionary  for  Schools,  written  by  himself  alone  in  1889, 
•  he  exhibits  in  a  manner  hitherto  unattempted  the  results  of 
modern  philological  study.  This  work  had  this  seal  of 
approval  set  on  it  in  advance  that  the  Syndicates  of  Oxford 
and  Cambridge  having  examined  the  plans  abandoned  a  sim¬ 
ilar  project  of  their  own.  This  is  an  honor  which,  so  far  as  I 
know,  our  versatile  classmate  enjoys  alone.  Later,  Lewis  pub¬ 
lished  another  Elementary  Latin  Dictionary  which  for  con¬ 
venience  and  utility  is  an  even  more  striking  performance  than 
the  other.  It  is  understood  that  he  has  in  preparation  a  new 
edition  of  Horace. 

I  may  mention  here  an  extremely  interesting  literary  coinci¬ 
dence  connected  with  the  history  of  our  class.  In  February 
1886,  Lewis  contributed  to  the  Yale  Literary  Magazine  a 
poem  on  St.  Telemachus,  the  Martyr.  The  subject  was  taken 
from  Theodoret’s  “  Ecclesiastical  History.”  The  passage  was 
quoted  in  Greek  as  the  text  of  the  poem,  which  was  in  one 
hundred  and  eighty  four  blank  verse  lines  and  was  written  by 
Lewis  as  his  contribution  to  the  semi-centennial  of  the  Maga¬ 
zine  of  which  in  our  college  days  he  had  been  one  of  the 
editors.  In  1892  a  small  posthumous  volume  of  Tennyson's 
poems  was  published  in  which  the  fourth  poem  is  on  the  same 
subject  and  based  on  the  same  passage  in  Theodoret  which  is 
given  not  in  the  Greek,  but  in  an  English  translation  appended 
as  a  note.  The  poem  is  much  shorter  than  Lewis's,  but  is  in 
the  same  metre  and  based  on  the  same  passage  and  turns  on 
the  same  points  in  the  same  passage. 


I 


57 

White  has  published  a  good  deal  on  historical,  critical  and 
literary  subjects  in  Magazines  and  Reviews.  His  volume  on 
Religion  and  Science,  of  which  we  have  had  some  anticipation 
in  the  Popular  Science  Monthly,  is  understood  to  be  now  in 
press.  We  are  still  hoping  for  the  work  which  is  to  match  in 
literature  his  achievement  at  Cornell  as  a  founder  and  be  worthy 
of  his  reputation  as  a  student  of  history. 

Bacon  has  issued  an  adequate  book  on  a  woman  of  genius, 
his  father’s  sister,  Delia  Bacon. 

Whiton’s  list  of  publications  is  growing  voluminous  and 
shows  what  he  has  done  as  a  student-teacher,  as  a  preacher  and 
as  an  advanced  thinker  within  the  lines  of  liberal  orthodoxy. 
His  school-manuals  and  editions  are  many  and  good.  His * 
brochure,  Is  Eternal  Punishment  Endless  f  was  the  first  note 
of  a  controversy  whose  last  notes  have  scarcely  died  away  after 
twenty  years.  The  Gospel  of  the  Resurrection ,  a  much 
stronger  book,  is  a  new  way  of  looking  at  the  old  verities  of 
the  faith.  In  England  he  has  achieved  a  reputation  wdiich  has 
opened  to  him  several  influential  pulpits  in  the  summer  and 
given  him  a  public  of  sure  buyers  for  the  annual  volume  he 
has  published  for  several  years  in  succession. 

In  1887  Heard  published  his  literary  monument,  The  Russian 
Church  and  the  Russian  Dissent ,  a  capital  wrork  on  a  subject 
which  no  one  had  handled  as  well  and  which  remains  the  only 
respectable  English  authority  we  have.  Had  he  been  as  great 
a  master  of  English  style  as  he  was  in  knowledge  of  the  sub¬ 
ject  and  in  his  broad,  comprehensive  and  systematic  plan,  it 
would  have  brought  him  the  highest  honors. 

Stearns  has  produced  three  volumes  on  nervous  diseases  and 
insanity,  whose  value  has  been  recognized  by  the  profession  at 
home  and  abroad. 

Clark  is  the  author  of  three  volumes  which  represent  many 
years  of  study  and  reflection  on  a  general  theme  which  began 
to  work  in  his  mind  in  his  college  days,  the  divine  philosophy 
.  of  history.  Their  titles  are :  The  Arabs  and  the  Turks ,  The 
Races  of  European  Turkey  •  and  Fundamental  Questions 
relating  to  the  Book  of  Genesis  and  the  Hebrew  Scriptures. 


58 


PERSONAL  AND  PRIVATE. 

There  remains  to  be  noticed  one  other  aspect  of  our  class- 
history  which  should  not  be  omitted  as  it  bears  a  close  relation 
to  the  University  and  to  the  results  of  the  Yale  training  which 
which  we  carried  out  with  us  as  our  capital  stock  to  begin  life 
on,  I  refer  to  the  versatility  of  our  men. 

It  has  been  said  that  versatility  is  an  art  developed  in  primi¬ 
tive  social  conditions  and  that  cultured  or  college  men  lose  it 
or  at  any  rate  do  not  possess  it. 

I  have  not  studied  other  classes  as  I  have  our  own,  but  the 
history  of  this  one  college  class  does  not  show  this  point  well 
taken.  Few  of  our  men  took  their  direction  at  the  start.  As 
a  rule  they  circled  about  a  good  deal  when  they  first  rose  free 
into  the  air  from  college  and  before  they  launched  out  on  their 
course.  They  have  been  quick  to  change  front  and  direction 
and  push  for  new  chances.  The  old  trick  of  having  more  than 
one  string  to  the  bow  has  nearly  as  many  illustrations  in  the 
class  as  it  has  members.  This  surprising  versatility  makes  on 
my  mind  the  impression  that  a  college  training  instead  of  being 
in  the  way,  instead  of  specializing,  confining  and  narrowing  a 
man  puts  a  special  value  on  the  different  elements  of  force  in 
him  and  reserves  them  for  use  on  occasion.  It  was  said  during 
the  late  War  that  a  West  Pointer  was  never  at  a  loss  in  any  kind 
of  campaigning.  The  study  of  our  class  history  makes  just  this 
impression  on  me,  and  carries  us  back  to  our  college  life  to  tell 
us  why  a  college  man  is  not  lost  in  any  kind  of  life. 

Our  class  history  contains  two  typical  examples.  Douglass 
is  one,  a  type  of  the  Yale  man  in  the  western  country  and  in 
pioneer  life.  He  was  poor  in  college  and  poor  when  he  was 
graduated.  He  made  no  wry  faces,  but  came  up  fresh  to  every 
fence.  He  went  to  Texas  a-teaching ;  then  to  New  Orleans, 
where  he  got  together  plunder  enough  from  the  rich  Egyptians  to 
carry  him  through  the  Harvard  Law  School.  Then  he  opened 
an  office  in  Texas  but  was  soon  pushed  out  into  Kansas,  where 
the  times  were  hard  and  man’s  life  troubled.  By  1857  he 
was  in  the  famous  Free  State  Territorial  Legislature.  The 
next  year  found  him  in  the  still  more  famous  Leavenworth 
Constitutional  Convention.  Two  years  later  he  was  working 


59 


with  the  forces  of  law  and  order  as  Superintendent  of  Public 
Schools  in  Kansas.  He  held  on  to  his  profession  as  a  lawyer, 
but  expanded  it  into  teaching  and  then  added  a  little  dab¬ 
bling  in  real  estate.  By  and  by  the  school  business  faded  out 
of  sight ;  the  law  grew ;  the  real  estate  grew ;  but  the  family 
grew  most  of  all.  His  son  was  graduated  at  Yale ;  his  daugh¬ 
ter,  at  a  first-rate  Eastern  institution.  Thirteen  years  ago  he 
lost  his  first  wife.  Five  years  ago  the  day  after  our  class-meet¬ 
ing  at  Savin  Rock  the  wedding  bells  rang  for  his  bridal  with  a 
lady  whose  name  he  had  imparted  to  me  in  provisional  confi¬ 
dence  as  Charlotte  A.  Barton. 

The  second  man  is  Dowd,  whose  career  has  been  in  another 
way  a  typical  success,  achieved  not  in  the  pioneer  life  of  the 
West,  but  in  an  old  and  crowded  community,  in  learned  and 
cultivated  relations. 

Dowd  made  his  own  way  to  college  from  a  cobbler’s  bench 
and  came  late,  but  he  came,  and  he  came  determined.  He  was 
in  my  division.  A  recitation  was  with  him  always  a  work  of 
obstinacy  and  determination  applied  to  the  business  in  hand. 
Another  man  would  have  sat  down,  but  he  would  not.  He 
was  anxious.  He  was  determined.  He  stuck  to  it  and  he  got 
through.  He  took  this  method  with  him  into  life.  He  was 
anxious ;  he  was  determined ;  he  stuck  to  it,  chasing  the  prize 
up  hill  and  down  hill,  through  all  sorts  of  hedges,  and  now  as 
wre  contemplate  Dowd  he  is  one  of  the  typical  successes  on  our 
roll.  He  has  achieved  a  family  for  the  first  thing,  a  stalwart 
set  of  college  bred  boys  (not  at  Yale,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  but  at 
Williams,  I  think).  He  has  achieved  a  competent  property 
and  with  it  the  means  of  securing  what  the  Greeks  considered 
the  only  rational  reason  for  working  at  all,  an  opportunity  to 
stop  working.  He  has  achieved  the  learned  rewards  of  stu¬ 
dious  leisure,  a  large  flourishing  school  and  the  Standard 
Time  scheme,  not  a  small  nor  insignificant  thing  for  a  man  to 
do.  He  has  done  one  other  thing  too  which  may  have  been  done 
before  in  this  world,  but  I  never  heard  of  it.  In  1888,  when 
he  was  thirty-five  years  out  of  college  and  sixty-three  old,  he 
passed  his  examination  for  the  degree  of  Doctor  of  Philosophy 
and  earned  it  fairly,  not  on  the  vague  basis  of  honoris  causa , 
but  on  the  solid  ground  of  merit. 


60 


This  is  a  distinction  of  which  we  may  well  feel  proud.  The 
story  is  one  which  I  believe  no  other  college  class  can  tell  and 
which  is  probably  now  given  to  the  Yale  Class  of  ’53  for  the  first 
time.  We  may  be  proud  of  it,  as  the  ancients  were,  that  Plu¬ 
tarch  tackled  Latin  and  Cato  Greek  when  they  were  eighty 
years  old.  I  mention  it  here  with  delight  as  a  bright  and  partic¬ 
ular  gem  in  our  career  and  I  offer  it  to  our  Alma  Mater  in 
recognition  of  the  service  she  rendered  us  in  teaching  us  to 
love  good  and  honest  work  and  to  win  our  way  by  doing  it. 

Of  one  thing  more  I  trust  myself  in  closing  to  speak  only 
briefly,  for  it  is  sacred  and  deep,  the  feeling  we  have  cherished 
for  each  other  as  members  of  one  college  class  and  that  the 
Yale  Class  of  ’53. 

This  feeling  has  nowhere  been  so  strong  as  at  Yale  and  must 
have  roots  lying  back  somewhere  in  the  breast  and  home  of  the 
Alma  Mater.  It  has  been  a  distinguishing  feature  of  all  our 
class  history.  We  have  loved  to  meet  and  have  held  our  re¬ 
unions  more  frequently  and  in  larger  numbers  than  any  other 
class.  We  have  kept  up  our  circles  of  college  friendship. 
Whenever  the  chances  of  life  have  brought  a  number  of  our 
men  together  they  have  become  a  band  of  brothers.  A  group 
of  his  classmates,  as  honorary  bearers,  followed  the  remains  of 
Julius  Catlin  when  they  were  borne  from  St.  George’s  Chapel 
to  their  resting  place.  Another  group  followed  Seymour 
to  his  grave  in  Litchfield  and  another  Gibson  to  his  in 
Kentucky.  Another  classmate  did  what  he  could  for  Gillespie, 
dying  alone  fifteen  hundred  miles  from  his  home.  Those 
who  have  died,  from  Walden,  the  first,  to  Billings,  the  last, 
we  cherish  them  all.  To  them  and  to  us  the  bond  has  been 
and  is  the  same,  one  of  the  brightest,  best  and  most  sacred 
possessions  that  ever  blest  the  life  of  man  on  earth.  One  of  our 
number  who  may  be  dying  even  now  as  I  write  my  last  words 
in  this  Report  sends  to  his  classmates  through  me  the  loving 
farewell  of  a  brother  and  his  prayer  and  hope  that  he  may 
meet  again  in  the  life  beyond  those  whose  companionship  has 
been  so  sweet  to  him  in  his  life  here. 


'•  !*■ 


- 


•••*'**& 

P 


